


Delivery Service

by assassin_trifecta



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: And i finally get to stretch my fingers out over some of my favorite dmc headcanons, Dante is a jealous garbage bag, F/M, Look I just needed to do some introspection and I ended up with this, POV First Person, POV reader, Probably a lot of pizza, This is written seriously but it's not a very serious fic, gratuitous abuse of italian-american tropes, it's kind of reader insert kind of OC, no one can tell me that the twins weren't born in italy, she's got a name now but you can ignore it if you want
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:24:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7305061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/assassin_trifecta/pseuds/assassin_trifecta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Demons have been tracking me for as long as I remember. My mother died when I was fifteen and since then I've been running from them on my own, never spending too long in one town. But after too long in one place, I'm on the move again, and my cousin got me a job and an apartment in Capulet City. </p><p>I was just the Pizza Girl until I met him. Dante.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pizza Delivery

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna be real honest here, folks, this is not a seriously written fic. I was on a Devil May Cry kick when I was applying to a pizza joint down the street from me and I couldn't stop myself, then it got even worse when I figured out I got the job. So here, a little introspection and writing practice before a long month of Camp Nano and work.
> 
> Side note: I took some creative liberty with the street and city names. Sue me.  
> Another side note: This was originally written in second person, but I switched to first when I transcribed it onto paper. If there's any slip between points of view, let me know!

“What do we got, doll?”

I hated it when Paulie called me doll, but I was new here and had little room to argue against it. It’s an Italian thing, I guess, because the cousin who got me my new apartment in Capulet always called me that too, despite asking him to stop over a million times. Or maybe I’m just that cute. Either way, it grated on my nerves. Sure, I came to Capulet to make a name for myself, but I’m certainly sure it wasn’t supposed to be Doll.

                But still, I bit my tongue and finished ringing up the call that I got. _Have patience_. I had to remind myself of that every so often in this town. I just needed to have some patience.

                “Medium, everything but olives, thin crust,” I read off the order to Paulie, and put the extra copy in the window for him to read. “Make it-“

                “Crispy.” Paulie finished he order off for me, even though he wasn’t looking at the ticket. “Dante Sparda, local hero and debtor extraordinaire.” Paulie shook his head. “I do not envy you your late shift, Doll.”

                I frowned, my eyebrows pulled together in confusion, and Paulie just laughed at it. I was the only delivery driver that was on the late shift since fucking Janet called out sick. I didn’t mind so much, though, since it was more hours and no one really ordered pizza at one o’clock in the morning. So far, I felt good about my first graveyard shift. It was just Paulie and I, and things were going relatively well. But his tone started to put me on edge.

                “What do you mean?” I asked, frowning still at the cook as he threw the dough, letting it spin in the air and catching it with deft hands. With nothing left to do for myself, I leaned against the counter to watch him while he worked and wait for an explanation.

                “Dante’s a shark, Doll,” He warned, laying the dough out onto the counter to prepare. I kept watching him as he worked, and crossed my arms over my middle. “Don’t let him sink his teeth into you.” Paulie sounded remarkably like my cousin sometimes. Maybe another Italian thing. “Does to all the ladies around here,” he continued. “And then he leaves ‘em heartbroken. Man’s a shark.” He repeated, scoffing. “And he never pays his debts.”

                “Yikes.” I watched as Paulie put the pie in the oven, shaking my head. No one could be that bad, not even some guy named Dante. I had a hard time believing that, but then I remembered how quickly Paulie finished his order without even reading the ticket. “Does he order from here a lot?”

                “He pulls weird ass hours doing whatever it is he does, and we’re the only joint open ‘til three.” Paulie continued, as he dusted flour off his hands and onto his apron. “You ask me? The guy’s a user and an abuser. But people keep givin’ him work.” The older man shook his head, throwing his hands up into the air in frustration. “Town’s already bad enough, and we got people like him stickin’ around all the time.” With the pie in the oven and that the only order we were given, Paulie came through the kitchen door and into the shop front, leaning against the wall across from me. “That shop of his draws all sorta unwanted attention, and it’s been leveled more times than I can count.”

                “What does he _do_?” I asked, unable to keep the mingling of curiosity and horror from my voice. I wasn’t normally one to judge so quickly, but Paulie was painting a pretty bad picture of the guy.

                “He’s a ‘demon hunter’. A flat out merc, if you ask me.” Paulie added, spitting the words out with disdain. “But the sign says private detective, so no one does anything about it. Lives outta the shop on Verona. Can’t miss it, Gaudy as hell in neon. Whole wall looks like it’s aboutta come down – _again_. Devil May Cry. Psht,” He shook his head, rolling his eyes in the same motion. “What a mook.”

                Demon hunter. There was one over in Montague, but I had never met the woman. They say she breathed fire and bullets and no demon ever wanted to fuck with her or her city again. I didn’t know if there was any truth to those stories, but I was glad that there was a hunter in both cities, either way. Ever since I was little, demons had been coming after me, and I still couldn’t figure out why. That was the reason that I moved around so often, and once I got to Montague they stopped for a while. I thought that maybe it was because of the hunter there. But whatever the reason was, hunter or no, I was just pleased that they weren’t coming after me anymore. I was glad knowing that there was a hunter so that I could at least try and count myself safe in Capulet.

                Before I knew it, though, the pizza was done and Paulie was sending me on my way with a reminder that Dante was a “no good loser” and that I should “never get involved with that guy.” It sounded more like Paulie was just trying to scare me, at that point. No demon hunter could be bad, in my book. If they were doing their job, that’s all that mattered to me.

                I was glad that Paulie told me that Dante lived down Verona, though. That meant that I didn’t have to use my GPS. _And_ I knew what his shop looked like. Verona was the main road through Capulet, extending out all the way out to Montague, even. There was something tacky in it all, but I thought that it was rather ironic, considering. Capulet’s main street was lined with such lovely storefronts as Hot Toys and the aptly named Fair Verona. It was only two or three blocks down from the wonderful Love Planet that I finally saw it.

                Devil May Cry. Not as gaudy as Paulie had described it as, but the pink neon lady with the guns was a little much, I thought. The front of the shop _was_ a little dilapidated, though, but then again, so were most of the buildings in Capulet. There was one empty space beside a red motorcycle and a red convertible, and I easily slid my car into it, the word ‘debtor’ ringing through my head in Paulie’s thick accent.

                When I got out of the car and up the few steps to the stoop of the shop, I was surprised to see that the sign on the door still said ‘open’. Paulie mentioned that he ran crazy hours, but it was nearly quarter to two in the morning now, there was no way that Dante was _that_ crazy. _Demon hunter_. I reminded myself as I raised my hand to knock at the door. Evil doesn’t sleep.

                Beyond the old wood, I could hear two people arguing, a man and a woman. _Heartbreaker,_ Paulie had said. It wasn’t my place to eavesdrop, though, so I raised my hand to knock at the door. Before my knuckles could even touch the wood, however, the large wooden panel opened for me, and standing beyond it was a very… _large_ man.

                He smiled sweetly at me, and I was taken off guard. He wore no shirt, but dark pants that were unbuttoned barely clung to his hips that had such a deep V-line that I almost choked on the air of my greeting. He was well toned – almost too toned, really. Muscled just about everywhere with arms that looked like they could crush me. A spattering of silvery hair ran across his chest and narrowed down in a teasing line towards the undone jeans. There were scars raised up all over his skin.

                As soon as I realized what I was doing, my eyes snapped back to his face. light stubble, square jaw. Striking blue eyes. It was the hair that got me, though. He looked to be in his early thirties, maybe, but the hair was silvery white and hung down onto his face, droplets of water hanging from the tips dripping down onto his cheeks and the pavement between us. The sweet smile that he opened the door with turned into a knowing grin filled with too-sharp teeth when he noticed that I was impulsively checking him out. _A shark_ , Paulie’s voice reminded me. But I could hardly think of anything more than letting this man sink his teeth into me. _This must be Dante._

                “Well hey there Doll,” he said, voice like warm sand at the beach. Gravely but soothing, all at the same time. I didn’t even mind that he called me Doll. Dante leant against the door frame, strong arms crossed over his strong chest, a smirk plastered on his lips. “What can I do for you?”

                Just before I opened my mouth, I could tell that something terrible was going to happen.

                Dante must have felt the same thing, though, because he stepped back from the door and yanked me into the shop with strength that sent me staggering forward, almost directly into a dark haired woman that perched herself on top of a large, old desk. She looked to be about just my age, which was a small comfort because she also looked like she could kill me without moving.

                She raised her eyebrows at me in question, but I was more captivated by her eyes themselves. One bright blue and one a shocking red. She was beautiful.

                “Look,” I started, standing up straight and turning to face Dante so that the woman didn’t think I was staring. “I just came here to deliver a pizza.” I gestured down to the container in my hands that was keeping the pizza warm, but I didn’t feel the conviction that I tried to impart into my words. Something really was wrong, and I didn’t mind being in the room with the two people that seemed like they could keep me the safest.

                “Hey, cool Doll,” Dante grinned at me as he walked past, but I could tell that it was strained. Behind the desk that the woman was perched on, he picked up a guitar case, and I barely had a moment of confusion to afford before he pulled a wicked looking claymore from the case. All sharp edges, skulls and bones making up the cross guard to an impossibly sharp blade. He swung the thing over his shoulder before turning to face me. “Why don’t you put it on the desk and step into the kitchen with Lady for a minute, Doll? I’ve got some business to take care of.”

                Demons. I realized it the second I did as he said. They followed me here and it looked like Dante was about to clean up my mess. I felt bad, but at the same time, he looked more than capable with that sword, even in his obvious state of undress. He was out of the shop in a moment, and I could just barely see him standing half naked in the middle of the street through the cracked-open door.

                “Come on then,” The woman hopped off of the desk, sighed, and placed her hands on her hips. “Let’s get you out of the line of fire.”

                I nodded, setting the pizza down on the desk before following after her as she made her way toward a door in the back of the shop. I wondered what her relationship with Dante was for a brief moment before remember that it was none of my business. Still, she looked impressive. Dark jeans and a tank top that was covered by a half-buttoned white dress shirt. Her heels clacked against the wood floor as she led me back from the shopfront to the kitchen, but it was the last thing that I noticed that surprised me the most. A gun belt, with three impressive pieces strapped into it, hung from her waist, with various pouches that I assumed were carrying the ammo. There was another gun on her thigh, and a knife sheathed on the other one.

                “My name’s Lady,” she spoke again when we were safely in the kitchen, hopping up to sit on the counter. Lady gestured for me to sit down at an old, beat-up dining table pressed against the corner opposite her. “I’m Dante’s business partner.”

                _Fire and bullets._ The thought passed my mind before I had time to stop it. Was she the hunter that had been over in Montague? If she was Dante’s business partner and she had all those guns, there was no doubt in my mind that she was a demon hunter as well.

                “Do you live in Montague?” The question was out of my mouth before I could control my lips.

                “I’ve got my own little gig down there, yeah,” Lady replied, her dual-toned eyes narrowing at me. “Why?”

                “Just – there were rumors about a devil hunter there,” I finished lamely, not wanting to give too much of myself away, but also embarrassed about my assumption. “You fit the description, is all.”

                Lady’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Clearly she hadn’t expected me to guess that she was a demon hunter, but I didn’t know why. Dante and his massive sword, the guns strapped all over her. It was a pretty logical conclusion, I thought. But maybe that was because I already knew the truth – it didn’t seem like a lot of people in Capulet were quick to accept what Dante did beneath the private investigator sign.

                “Yeah, that’s me,” she blinked at me, her eyebrows coming together. “How did you-“

                “Hey, Doll?” Dante’s voice from the kitchen door cut Lady off from finishing her question.

                I couldn’t stop myself from gasping when I turned to face him. His hair was matted down and red with what I could only assume was blood, and his body was covered in gaping wounds. The strangest part was that they were already healing up before my very eyes. But none of that seemed to matter to Dante, clearly, because when he spoke, his voice was grave and his eyes were narrowed directly at me.

                “You wanna tell me why you’re being followed by a pack of demons?”

\---

The accusation was abrupt, but I guessed that I deserved it. Well, not really. I hadn’t been tailed by demons for two years, and it had been nice to think that particular chapter of my life was closed for good. There was no reason for me to think that demons had followed me there, of all places. After all, it had only been Paulie and I at work alone all night – why wouldn’t they just get me there, and Paulie as a plus? Why would they follow me to a demon hunter’s shop, of all places?

                “I have no idea,” I admit, shaking my head. It wasn’t actually a lie. I hadn’t ever known the reason why I was being followed to begin with. “They’ve been tailing me as long as I can remember – ever since I was a little girl. They stopped for a couple years while I was in Montague,” I glanced at Lady, giving her a short smile in thanks, even if she hadn’t been the reason that the demons had stopped hunting me. “I guess you were no small part of the reason why. But still,” I continued, looking back at Dante with an almost desperate expression on my face. “I thought they had stopped. And like I said, I’m just here to deliver pizza, I didn’t know they had caught up with me!” I threw my hands into the air in exasperation, getting to my feet. “I don’t owe anyone here an explanation of my life, I’m just the pizza girl!”

                Dante’s eyes narrowed at me in a scrutiny that I knew I didn’t deserve, but when he spoke, I was surprised by him yet again.

                “I’ve never seen you before,” He stated, and I was reminded once again that he ordered from Paulie frequently. He must have seen all of the late night delivery drivers before, but Janet was out sick so it was my first time. I had just started working there a couple of days ago, after all.

                “I just moved here.” I sighed, drained by all of the unnecessary interrogation. I only wanted to get back to work so that Paulie could close up shop and I could go home to prep my apartment against demons again, after all. “My cousin Nicky got me the job.”

                Dante paused. “Nicky Donato?” He asked after a moment of silence, lips turning down into a frown. When I nodded, he let out a quiet curse and shoved his hand into the pocket of his jeans to pull out a crumpled twenty. “Here,” he continued, holding the bill out to me. “And tell Paulie that I’ll have the rest of his money for him in the morning. Keep the change.”

                After the strange encounter was over, I returned to work more confused than I had ever been before.

                “Wassa matta?” Paulie asked when I stepped behind the counter. “Dante stiff you on the bill like he always does?”

                “What?” I asked, frowning as I pulled the crumpled twenty from my cash pouch and rang it into the register. There was five left over for tip. “No,” I finished with that, glancing to the side in time to catch Paulie’s surprise. “Does he normally? He said he’d have the rest of your money in the morning.”

                “Yeah,” Paulie scoffed, shaking his head. “And I’ll wake up twenty years younger with a hot wife and no kids.” It was silent for a moment while I thought that over before Pauile continued, a hint of sly probing in his voice. “You sure were gone a long time, Doll.”

                That was the last thing that I needed. I couldn’t very well tell Paulie that I had been tracked down by demons and Dante had saved my life.  It was clear that he didn’t believe in all of that, even if other people in the city did.

                “Yeah, I hit every red light to hell and back on my way.”  I lied easily, brushing the subject off while going about my duties to prepare to close up shop. It was late, I wanted to get home, and I’d been lying about demons on my back for my entire life now.

                But Paulie gave me a knowing look, and a smirk that I didn’t deserve.

                “You let him sink his teeth in!” He accused, biting the air playfully. “I told you, Doll, he’s a _shark_. And you let him right on in.”

\---

Paulie wasn’t exactly wrong. Dante was on my mind for most of the night after I went home to demon proof my apartment. He didn’t seem too pleased to hear cousin Nicky’s name earlier, but I couldn’t imagine why not. Nicky had always been good to me, to his wife, his friends, our family. I didn’t know he had a bad side to get on, but it seemed as though Dante had placed himself there pretty firmly, judging by his reaction when I mentioned the name.

                But then there was the man himself. With the way that he looked it wasn’t hard to imagine what Paulie had meant when he said that Dante was a heart breaker. Who answered the door practically naked like that, anyway? It made me wonder what Janet put up with on the graveyard shift. Or maybe she was one of the many that Dante had… sunk his teeth into? The thought made me shiver. I couldn’t imagine having a problem with being shark bait, if it was for him.

                I had to put that out of my mind, though. There was work to be done, and once I had finished prepping my apartment, it was something close to four in the morning. It wasn’t the best work that I had done, as it had been in the past, but I still had to be at work at noon and at least five hours of sleep would have been nice. Warding symbols, old ones that I had found in books and on in the internet. They would have to hold for now, until I could find some more permanent fix to the demon problem that was looming over my back.

                Before bed, I reached my hand below my pajama shirt through the neck, pulling out the pendant that perpetually hung around my neck so that I could put it in its rightful place on my nightstand. It had been my mother’s, given to me when she passed. A blue gem glittered in a silver setting on a gold chain that I had changed out a million times already. It wasn’t the only piece of my mother that I had left, but it was the one that was easiest to carry around on my person, and it was my favorite. For some reason, I just never felt whole leaving the house without it. I settled down to sleep at around four thirty.

                That night, I dreamt of demons.

                And of a silver haired hunter that drove them away.

\---

The next afternoon, Dante held true to his word. I was just pulling his order from the oven when I caught sight of a shock of silver hair outside the shop’s windows. It was nearly a hundred degrees out and he wore a black t-shirt, red vest, and the same leather pants that I had seen him in the night before. That might have been why he was trying to open a water bottle, but the gloves on his hands must have been too difficult to maneuver around because he dropped the thing when he finally got it squeezed open.

                Even from inside the kitchen I could hear him let out an angry curse and see him jump back from the spilled water.

                _Oh Christ,_ I thought, shaking my head. _He’s a fucking nerd._

                “Hey, Dante!” When the devil hunter walked into the shop, Paulie greeted him as though he’d never said a word against the man in his life. _Italians_. I shook my head while my boss continued. “What are you doing here, eh? Thought you got it for delivery these days.”

                “Pickin it up today, Paulie,” Dante returned, patting the man on the back while he tossed the empty water bottle over his shoulder. It landed in the garbage can with an empty crunch of plastic. “But let’s catch up in your office, yeah? I got business I wanna discuss.”

                A look of surprise passed over Paulie’s face before he turned toward the kitchen window.

                “Watch the shop, will ya Doll?” He called to me, and I responded with a nod, watching him lead Dante to the back and into his office. The devil hunter gave me a wink when he passed the kitchen window.

                I nearly dropped his pizza. _God, I hope he didn’t notice_.

                Dante’s order was out of the oven by the time that he hand Paulie emerged from the office. Whatever they had been talking about, it seemed to leave Paulie happy but stunned. There was a little skip in his step, and the smallest of smiles on his face. Whatever had him so pleased seemed to have the opposite effect on Dante, though. He looked like he had just been kicked in the stomach wearing a size 13 iron toed boot. Repeatedly. I had his pie baked and ready at the counter with me, but I was afraid that if he ate it he’d lose it on the car ride home. Paulie was humming in the kitchen behind me.

                “You don’t look so good.” I remarked, ringing him up at the register.

                “Losing half the pay from their last job will do that to a person.” He grunted in response, glaring over my shoulder at what I could only guess was my boss’ smiling face. The glare lasted only a moment longer before those ice blue eyes made their way back to me, though, and I could only nervously giggle in response. He raised an eyebrow. “Been followed by demons again, Doll?” He asked, voice low enough so that only I could hear.

                Of course he would bring that up again.

                “No, thank you,” I huffed, glaring up at him. Beneath the chain of my mother’s pendant, I wore another – a warding necklace that I had bought from a woman’s occult shop in the town I was in before Montague. So far, it hadn’t failed me, and I hadn’t been tracked down until the night before. “I’ve been taking care of myself for ten years now, I think I can handle a few wayward demons.”

                “Good.” Dante didn’t sound convinced, but he could sure as hell smirk like he was pretending to be. “Because I spilled Holy Water around the building. Won’t keep them out long, but it should work well if it soaks into the pavement before the next rain comes.” Great, now he was demon proofing my workplace with monastic Raid. Exactly what I needed. “Anyway,” the silver haired man’s smirk turned into a wolfish grin. “You should be more careful, Dollface.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out another twenty. I could see that the tips of his fingers were singed looking, an angry red blister forming on each. He dropped the bill into my hand when he caught me looking and tucked one hand into his pocket while the other reached for the pizza.

                “Thanks for the pie, Doll. Password’s Rebellion.” He was moving towards the door before I could even ring him up or ask him to explain what he meant. With one boot out of the shop, he raised his hand in farewell. “Keep the change!”

                Without the delivery charge, the tip was seven dollars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as it turns out I accidentally deleted this chapter in my sleep? I don't know what happened, but I'm here to fix it. Sorry for those that it might have messed up in the storyline, but I think it's fixed!


	2. Here Comes the Rain

And then I didn’t see or hear from Dante for the next few days.

                But throughout the radio silence from the Demon hunter, I hadn’t been followed at home or at work. The temperature was still up and the rain hadn’t fallen, so I assumed that the holy water around the shop was still viable, at least. It had been a good few days, though, and there was still nothing. The days were uneventful, and the evenings were less so. But Paulie started scheduling me more for closing, as Janet put in her two weeks and it was time for me to move up in the store. I was working one of those late nights when my cousin Nicky showed up to check on me.

                He seemed more impressed than necessary that I was doing better in the shop, hugging me around the shoulders after I threw the pizza order Paulie had just slid down to me.

                “Ah ha! My little cugina getting better every day!” I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my lips. Nicky always had a way of making me feel better about every little accomplishment, even if it was something silly. It felt like he had been making up for the loss of my mother ever since I was a little kid. After her funeral, Nicky always made sure that I had family around me, no matter where I was moving. He had been a rock in my life, and now that I was in Capulet – closer to him and his father – it was like we were siblings.

                I was going to open my mouth to respond to him, but Paulie stuck his head out from the office door just then, looking back into the kitchen where the two of us were standing.

                “Hey, Nicky! She’s gotta get that order done and get it out before it’s time to close up shop, so get over here. I got business I gotta talk with you.” Paulie jerked his head back into the room, and Nicky gave me another short hug.

                “A’ight cugina, don’t cause no trouble now, ya hear?” Nicky gave me a wink before walking off in Paulie’s direction, leaving me alone to finish the pizza order that I had been given.

                With twenty minutes to wait while the pie cooked, I started closing duties, cleaning up the counters in the kitchen and running everything that needed it to the dishwasher. The front counter was usually Paulie’s job, but with him in the office I did the usual duties of wiping it down as well, stocking the cups and salad bowls that needed to be stocked.  My co-workers had closed the salad bar hours ago, so that didn’t need to be wiped down. Fifteen minutes left, and as I was about to go shift the pizza down from one oven shelf to the next, I saw it.

                The splatter of rain against the windows, tiny pelts at first, illuminated by the neon ‘open’ sign on the door. I realized with a panic that I should have checked the weather that morning. I had to park a block away and my only rain jacket was tucked into the back of my closet. It hadn’t rained in Capulet in months. Whoever thought that drought would break on one of the hottest summers in decades was crazy.

                But then there was something else beyond the window that caught my eye. Looming quietly just across the street. Ever watching, its red eyes boring straight into my own. I watched, transfixed, as it was joined by another set of glowing red orbs in the night. Two more. Six sets of demon eyes stared at me from the street over, waiting for something that I couldn’t guess.

                _Before the next rain comes._

                That had been days ago, hadn’t it? But how long, exactly, did it take for Holy Water to have fully soaked into the pavement and stay there? Was there some steeping period that Dante hadn’t told me about? Panic and fear flared up in me, I turned my head back to call for help, but when I looked into the shop there was something wrong.

                The air seemed to be distorted, the ground warping under my feet though I couldn’t feel any difference. It felt like when I laid my head down at night with a migraine, the entire world slipping down to one side, my brain falling through my skull. It made me dizzy, and the more I looked, the more things didn’t seem to be right. The oven was too large, and fire spewed out from it. The sickly smell of rotten meat came from the kitchen and I wanted to gag. I glanced outside again, and the only thing that seemed real was the twelve red eyes that stared through the window.

                I reached for the phone in my pocket instead of calling for Nicky or Paulie. Something told me that they weren’t there, but that there was one person who could help me. I’d looked up the number to his shop a couple nights before, curious as to what he could have meant when he left with his pizza the last time I saw him. I hadn’t found anything, but Devil May Cry was listed in the yellow pages as a legitimate business. I’d written down the number just to be safe, put it in my phone so I wouldn’t have to memorize it. It seemed a little creepy at the time, but I figured times like these would happen eventually and I would need a demon hunter’s help. Especially one like Dante.

                “Devil May Cry.” His voice wasn’t as distorted as the rest of the world felt, but it was still dull, foggy over the phone.

                “Dante?” I asked, and it sounded like I was speaking under water. It _felt_ like I was speaking under water, the air moving through my lungs sluggishly and paste-like. “Dante I need your help.”

                “What’s the password?” Even through the thick texture of the call, he sounded more alert.

                So that was what that was for. The word formed in my mouth before I could even think about making a better rational decision.

                “Rebellion.”

                “That’s what I like to hear. What can I do for you?”

                “I need help, Dante. They’re after me. They’re here. It’s raining. They’re coming after me again.”

                “Dollface?” The alert was real now, and I could hear him moving over the phone, something thumping down somewhere. The scrape of metal against his floor. “Where are you?”

                “Work.” I managed, swallowing down the bile that threatened to come up when I opened my mouth. I felt sick, and I couldn’t stand straight. Like I’d been drugged, but the last time I ate anything had been when the sun was still up. This couldn’t be happening to me. “Dante, hurry.”

                “Don’t worry, Doll, I’m coming for you.” He said nothing else, and the phone slammed down onto the receiver on his end with a loud thunk.

                My own phone fell from my now limp hand, and I watched, dazed, as a new set of eyes appeared in the darkness. I couldn’t see who they belonged to, and though it seemed they were blacker than the night, they were illuminated by something strange. Only too late, as the figure took a step forward, did I realize that they weren’t eyes, but hellish flames dancing in its sockets. I was surprised, however, to see the figure of a man standing before me through the shop glass, just beyond the windows. Dante’s Holy Water trick must have worn off by now, then.

                The man with black fire eyes smirked at me. His skin was pale, his hair was as black as his eyes and I could tell that it, too, was burning at the ends. He wore a dark suit with thin white pinstripes, the wingtip shoes on his feet matching in color. He seemed absolutely monochrome, sucking the color of the world from around him. He looked evil, but once he saw the fear in my expression his smirk strangely softened, a warm smile taking its place.

                “Fear us not,” he spoke softly, and though I shouldn’t have been able to hear his voice, the melodic tone of it – in such stark contrast to his ghastly appearance – rang beautifully in my ears. In my head, I realized. The voice reverberated all around me, pressing in and surrounding me so that it filled my skull. “The master has only sent us here to bring you home.”

                “Master?” I asked, and my voice still sounded warped in the air, as though the water hadn’t moved away from me, but into my lungs. Breathing felt like choking. Speaking any more than a few syllables felt like I was going to suffocate, drown in the air that I was breathing. “Who is your master?”

                “Why, the lord Mundus, my dear,” the demon – he _had_ to be a demon, there was nothing else that could explain what was happening – spoke in my head again. He extended his hand out to me, palm up in a gesture of civility. His skin was paler there, softer looking despite the fact that his nails were sharpened and pointed into needle-like blades. His palm cupped, a gesture of _servility_ that I wasn’t entirely used to. Lord Mundus? What was he talking about? There were questions that I wanted to ask, but he kept speaking and my mind felt like it was moving through molasses. “The Lord has been waiting for you to come home, my dear girl, it’s time you return with u-“

                The demon was never able to finish speaking. His black flame eyes widened in shock just a moment before the wide tip of a deadly looking claymore burst from his chest, directly between the space in his lungs where his heart should have been, if he’d had an internal system to moderate that. But as it stood, Mundus’ second in command was no longer his staunch ally, but a devout pile of sand on the ground. Beyond the pane of glass, I could see Dante, his sword – evil and warped looking in this strange environment – still slick with black blood. He stared at me through the window, but before I could speak to him, the six red eyed figures from across the street approached.

                “Dante!” Was all the warning I could muster, the scream garbled in the thick air. I choked on the cry, but that didn’t matter.

                The devil hunter moved faster than I could comprehend in the warped space and time that I was in. Before his name had even gotten fully out of my mouth he was turning around, pistols in his hands and firing into the red eyes of the demons that crept up behind him. They were piles of sand in seconds and when Dante turned back to face me his hands and face were covered with dark blood, his snowy hair discolored with the substance. I stared in shock, my eyes wide open as he holstered his weapons, moving faster than I could process and at the same time, slower because of the thickness of the air.

                “Hey, Dollface.” When he spoke to me his voice was softer, concern in his tone that I couldn’t comprehend. He jerked his head toward the street lamp at the other side of the road, offering me a short, fanged grin. “Why don’t you come on out here and we’ll get you somewhere safe?”

                Only then did I realize that there was no door.

                Panic settled quick, but breathing through the alarm and the fear was more difficult than it had been before.  I felt my chest heaving but the air moving through my lungs was still the sluggish horror it had been before, thick and wet and I felt more like I was suffocating than anything else, which only made it worse for me. I gripped at my throat, but Dante’s cool, collected voice broke through the thick silence again.

                “Don’t worry, Dollface,” he said, holding his hand out in a similar gesture to the demon that stood there before him. His palm wasn’t cupped and his hand was covered in blood, but the gesture was inviting. If it hadn’t been on the other side of impenetrable glass. “Just reach for me.”


	3. Panic

Cautious, but choking and filled with panic that I could barely think through, I reached my hand out to Dante. When my fingers touched the glass I shuddered hard, the warmth of it settling into my bones in the strangest way. I hadn’t realized how freezing I’d been in the distorted version of the shop, but it felt like the glass had been blasted with fire before I’d touched it. But that heat only lasted for a moment before my hand was falling through the glass. I felt the fear spike in me for a moment before I could see my hand on the other side, the refraction making it smaller and cut off from me in a strange way. It appeared to move slower than I felt it, my fingers brushing the calloused pads on Dante’s own before I could see them touching through the glass.

                “That’s it, Doll,” Dante encouraged, voice softer than I could have ever imagined coming out of a blood stained man in a red leather coat with that evil looking weapon on his back. The juxtaposition drove me forward, and before I knew it my entire arm was through the pane of glass, up to my shoulder. I held my breath before my face went in, and soon I was consumed.

                The warmth of the window blasted through me for only a moment before I was on the other side, my eyes closed tight for fear of what would happen if I kept them open. I could breathe again. I could feel the rain on my skin, warmer than I had expected it. The heat of the summer night wasn’t as bad as the glass had been but it still felt like my body was on fire compared to what it had been in the shop. I shivered, I choked on the oxygen that was flooding into my lungs. I dropped Dante’s hand and brought both of my own up to cover my ears. The almost dead silence of the shop before made the air flow of the outside world seem like a convention of 18 wheelers driving down the road beside me escorted by the motorcycle police force.

                “Dollface?” Even Dante’s soft tones sounded like an entire marching band in my head after what that demon had done to me. I stared down at the pile of sand where he had fallen but the pavement beneath me was clean of any demonic debris. I frowned, looking up at Dante’s expression. “What’s wrong?” He asked, catching onto my obvious concern.

                “Where’s the demon?” I asked in return, and even my own quiet voice sounded like shouting in my ears. I had to take a moment, close my eyes and acclimate myself to the surroundings. “Where are any of the demons?”

                Dante stared at me for a moment, concern drawing his brow close together before his attention was taken by something behind me. I started to turn my head to follow his line of sight but he captured my chin with his hand, keeping me from looking that way.

                “What do you need?” He asked me, guiding away from my questions with about as much subtlety and tact as a herd of elephants. Blue eyes like where the sky meets the ocean bore into mine and I couldn’t bring myself to even try to look away from him. I felt my hand reach up to grasp the blue gem of my mother’s necklace without fully realizing I was doing it. “What do you need Dollface?” Dante repeated, keeping my focus on him the entire time.

                “I need…” What did I need? I felt antsy, my ears still hurt, and there were so many questions that I had that I couldn’t supply an answer to for myself. The panic that had been there before, when I was still trapped in the shop, had abated for a few moments only to come back in full force, and now that I could breathe properly I could feel my chest begin to heave uncontrollably. “I need – I need – to – I need to work.” The words fell out of my lips so fast that they stumbled over each other, caught up in the net of my lips that didn’t seem to want to let them out. I tore my chin away from Dante’s hand, taking a step back from him so that I could turn on my own without him stopping me.

                I halted in my tracks when I saw what lay before me.

                _There_ were the demons.

                The shop was destroyed, in a way that made absolute zero sense to me. The windows were broken, glass falling inside and out, the pavement covered in the shattered remnants of it. There was dark blood splattered across the walls, bullet holes lining just about every surface. Great gashes were in the walls from what I could only assume was Dante’s hellish sword. The oven was destroyed, the front counter caved in and nearly sliced in half. Tables that weren’t cut through entirely were on their sides, chairs were blown to pieces by guns or some other weapons that didn’t appear to belong to Dante and, therefore, I could only assume were demonic in nature. The door to Paulie’s office was broken at its hinges, hanging precariously into the kitchen. But worst of all was the sand.

                Great piles of it littered the floor, more than the seven that I had seen Dante fell through the warped glass of whatever hell I had been in before. There were almost no visible spots on the floor of the shop, as most of it was covered in the thick dusting of demon corpses. It looked like there had been a battle here the likes of which _no_ one could miss.

                So why had I not seen any of it?

                I stared, shocked, at the display before me, stunned into silence by the obvious massacre.

                “Dante?” I asked, my voice like a shout in my ears though I knew I only spoke barely above a whisper. “Where are they?” I turned to face him again, my eyes wide with the horror of the realization that was falling upon me. There were two people that I didn’t see here, two bodies that hadn’t been demons – shouldn’t have turned into the piles of sand before me. “Where are Paulie and Nicky?”

                “They’re safe.” Dante’s tone was surprisingly solemn, and his eyes were sad. Like he had wanted to keep me from this, whatever it was, despite the fact that I stood only feet away from it. “Lady was here with me.” Why had I not _seen_ her? “She got them out of here while I kept the demons busy.” How many of them had there _been_?

The horror that I had known before washed over me again as he spoke, and I staggered on my feet, the sudden influx of oxygen that I had been getting proving too much for me to be able to handle. I nearly fell, but Dante’s hands reached out faster than I thought he could move, catching me before I had a chance to fall. He held me there, arms around my shoulders, my back against his chest, unmoving. I felt him breathe, the deep movement of his chest calming me. In… out… I matched my own breath to his, forcing my oxygen intake to slow and my body to calm.

                “Hold on there, Dollface,” he remarked, squeezing my shoulders ever so slightly. “Everything’s going to be fine.” But there were sirens in the distance, I could hear them above his breathing and the deafening rush of the wind in my ears. “But we gotta get you out of here, okay? You don’t need to get caught up in this.”

                “Okay.” I managed, nodding my head slowly. I looked around, barely registering the world around me but noting that there was no car here, the red convertible that I had seen Dante driving missing from the scene. “How?”

                “Take a deep breath,” he warned me, pulling me closer against his chest and sweeping one arm against the back of my knees so that he was holding me against him like a bride. Before I even had time to be embarrassed or ask him why, we were moving, the world blurring around us in a tunnel of red that was tinged with something that felt strangely familiar and horribly frightening but exhilarating at the same time.

                And then we were stopped. It felt like we had only been moving for barely a second but we were on the stoop of a familiar building. Devil May Cry, I realized a moment later from the pink sign and the arguing behind the door. Dante didn’t put me down.

                They were all voices that I was familiar with, and apprehension dug deep in my chest as Dante held me tighter with one arm so that he could open the door with the other. Relief flooded through me, however, when I saw the faces that matched the voices from the other side of the door. Nicky and Paulie stood in the center of the shop, Paulie with his arms crossed over his chest and Nicky with his finger pointing in that dangerous _Italian_ way at a woman that I had only met once before. Lady stared that them with her heterochromatic eyes, visibly unimpressed with their shouting. She stood with her hip cocked to the side, arms crossed under her chest in a mirror of Paulie and one dark eyebrow raised at the two men.

                Their argument halted when Dante stepped through the door with me in his arms.

                Nicky was by my side in a second, worry written clear in his features, the anger that had been there before wiped away completely when he saw me. Paulie was there just afterwards and though there was relief in his eyes they were more wary, than anything else.

                “Oh, jeeze, kid,” Nicky lamented, reaching out to brush my hair out of my face, wiping his thumb over my cheeks. I hadn’t realized there were tears falling down my face until I felt him smear the wet across my skin. When his hand pulled away it was dark with smeared, wet dirt that I could only guess was some unfortunate demon’s remnants on my skin. I wanted to retch, but Nicky kept going and Dante wasn’t letting me out of his hold. “Are you okay cugina? What _was_ that?” His second question was directed at Dante, a glare replacing the worry.

                “Demons,” I replied before Dante could, the strength and depth of my voice surprising me. I kicked my legs gently, signaling to the devil hunter that I wanted to be put down. He lowered his arms carefully, and as I crawled out of them I looked up at my boss and my cousin. “The ones that I’ve been running from.” Or at least, that’s what I gathered. I could only run for so long, however, before something like this happened. Dante’s little trick with the holy water had kept my workplace safe for longer than I thought it would, and my own wards protected me at home, but it was only a matter of time before the dam broke loose and they found me when I least expected it. “They got to me.”

                Of all of the people that I knew, that I was close to, there were few that knew what I was doing with my life, why I moved around so often. Here, in Capulet, it was Nicky that knew. He’d always been helping me find new places, settle myself somewhere safe so that I could be close to family and friends if something were to happen. He didn’t know all the details, didn’t know the severity of the situation and why I was stuck in it – of course, I didn’t know many of those details myself – but he was there for me and he knew the trouble that I was in. When he heard me say the word, his gaze darkened, but not in a threat to Dante. He was upset, clearly, angry even. But there was no malice in his eyes when he looked up at the demon hunter.

                “Thank you for protecting my cousin,” Nicky finally stated, nodding his head in gratitude. I glanced back at Dante, my surprise matching the very same expression on his face. He clearly hadn’t been expecting thanks from my cousin, but I couldn’t tell why. Their relationship was a mystery to me. “She has faced many dangers in her life, but you’ve managed to thwart this. For now. I never expected you to be an honorable man, Dante, but you’ve proven yourself otherwise.” He nodded again, but this time only emphasizing the finality of his point. “Consider any past discrepancies between us to be cleaned away.”

                Now _that_ was considerate of him. Nicky had always been good to me and the people that he cared about, but he was notoriously harsh on people that he didn’t hold in high regards. That he had wiped away any bad blood between he and Dante was an impressive move for him. I could only manage a blink in surprise, and when I glanced at Paulie I could see that he was taking his time to register the action as well.

                “Thanks, Nicky,” Dante managed, huffing out a surprised breath from his nose. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to have a word with your cousin. Alone,” he added, when it looked like Nicky was about to interrupt. “There are topics of a sensitive nature that I’d like to discuss with her that I’m sure she might not be comfortable speaking about with the two of you around.” He glanced between Nicky and Paulie, both looking no small amount of offended at his forwardness. “It’s all strictly business, of course, and Lady will be here to mediate.”  He gestured to the other devil hunter, and though she seemed surprised at the volunteering of her time and service – none too pleased, either, I noted – she nodded her head in consent.

                “What about-“ Paulie started, but Dante held his hand up.

                “Your shop will be taken care of, Paulie.” Dante nodded in affirmation, and though Paulie didn’t look like he believed the demon hunter he seemed to accept the unspoken promise in Dante’s tone. Perhaps it was something about the business that they had discussed those few days before, but Paulie seemed more willing to agree to something that Dante had promised him than he would have been the week prior. “Please – our business is important.” His voice had a somber tone that you wouldn’t have expected from him, but it seemed to sap whatever energy was in the room as he spoke.

                Nicky and Paulie shared glances, looked back at Lady and then between Dante and I.

                “Alright, fine.” Nicky nodded after a moment, being the one that had responsibility over me for the time being. He was the only family that I had here, besides my uncle. He was able to act as my caretaker, My proxy. “But if she’s hurt at all-“ His voice and eyes both hardened as he pointed one threatening index finger at Dante.

                “She won’t be hurt, that you can trust.” Lady finally spoke up, and Nicky and Paulie both turned to her, frowning. “She’s in good hands here. Dante and I will both take care of her.”

                That shut them up. There was silence for a moment, and I could hear sirens in the distance.

                Paulie and Nicky left shortly after a briefing, about what they would tell the police and who they could trust in the department. There were a few officers who knew Dante’s work and could be trusted with the investigation into the pizza shop. There was silence following their departure from Devil May Cry.

                I had moved to the couch by the time that they were gone, sinking quietly into the soft red leather and thinking about all that had happened in the past few hours alone. The demons had caught up with me, and in a terrible way those that I had cared about paid the price. The shop was ruined, and I didn’t expect Paulie would be getting it up and running any time soon. There went my job in Capulet, and though I knew that Nicky would be able to find me another one I worried that he would hesitate to, considering I had a lot of recovery ahead. Perhaps he would even try to convince me to move in with my uncle.

                “Hey, Dollface,” Dante was speaking again, and I realized that he was crouched down a few feet in front of me, voice tinged with that uncharacteristic softness I had grown to expect of him throughout the night. “We gotta talk.”

                “Alright,” I nodded, coming to terms with what I knew was about to happen. “I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa, look at that, I was in a writing mood! Tbh I just didn't want to write my theology final essay so I did this instead and turned out two updates in a 12 hour period. More like one and a half, because I had part of the last chapter written a long time ago before I published. So here it is, we're moving further! And we're going to get some explanation soon! Boy I love it when the exposition hits halfway into the story. 
> 
> Thanks for enjoying, everyone!  
> \- Sam <3


	4. Trade

“I need to know everything.” Dante didn’t waste any time, rising to his feet properly and moving back to his desk. Lady was perched there feigning disinterest while filing her nails, but I could see her eyes shift to me when Dante sat at his desk with a thumping note of finality. He kicked his feet up onto his desk, but even the laid back posture wasn’t enough to deter the severity of his gaze when he turned it to me. “From the beginning.”

                Suddenly, I was starting to regret telling him that I was ready to talk. I opened my mouth but the words froze in my throat, a lump forming there as I gazed back at him, at a loss for words that should have flown freely. From the beginning? Where would I even start? Was he talking about just this evening or further back? He had known demons were tailing me, but he didn’t know why and I could have told him that, except that I didn’t know the reason either. Where was the beginning and what was the safest route to get there with words?

                “Demons killed my mother.” That was a bit far back, but the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. Any movement in the room halted. Lady’s filing stopped mid-nail, the subtle movement of Dante’s chest and shoulders as he breathed halted for the briefest of moments. The silence that followed my sentence filled the air so wholly and so abruptly that it felt too similar to the hellscape that I had been in before. I turned my gaze down to my lap and took a shaky breath, breaking the silence with the noise of it just to keep the memories of that place at bay. My hand fluttered up to the pendant at the notch of my throat. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Lady turn her gaze at Dante.

                “I was fifteen.” My voice rang louder through the shop than I expected it to, even as I spoke barely above a whisper. “We’d watched a movie that night, and I told her I was going to bed, but I was really staying up to do the homework that I’d put off to hang out with her.” I choked out a short laugh, shaking my head. “Mom was always harping on me about good grades, but she was feeling lonely that night so I stayed with her in the living room after dinner. She went to bed a little later. I was in the kitchen taking a break and getting a snack when I heard her window breaking.” I took a breath, closing my eyes against the memories of that night. “I didn’t know what to do so I just – I grabbed the biggest knife that we had from the counter and went up to her room. It was quiet in the house. I could hear her speaking with someone.”

\---

                _“Please, don’t take her away from me,” My mother’s words didn’t make any sense, but I was frozen at the door, stunned into listening to whatever was happening. Someone had broken into her room through the window and she was speaking with them? And what was I doing but standing there at her door with a knife, unmoving. There was no response from whoever was there with her, and my mother kept talking. “It’s not time, she’s not ready to know, please-“ It broke my heart to hear her pleading like that, but still I couldn’t bring myself to move. It felt like I was intruding on something that I shouldn’t have been hearing. My hand was on her doorknob but I couldn’t move the muscles to turn it._

_“It’s time.” The voice was deep, masculine, soothing in a way that was also terrifying. I couldn’t see whoever it was but they sounded big – larger than life, even. “You know not of what you speak, woman,” the voice continued, and it sounded agitated, on the verge of anger. I tried to turn the doorknob but my hand was frozen for real, I couldn’t move, and the knob seemed to be stuck. Whatever was on the other side of that door knew that I was here. Listening. “There are forces at play that are beyond you.”_

_“She’s just a girl. A teenager, she doesn’t know what’s going on.” My mother’s plea was quiet, whispered. I had never heard her so frightful in my life. “She’s not ready.”_

_“You do not get to decide!” It was louder now, shouting in a way that shook the very boards of the house. I gasped, my mother gasped, and there was silence. “I will have her,” the man continued, softer now, more sinister. “You do not get to decide.”_

_“Wait-!” My mother’s cry of panic was cut off with a gurgle of pain and only then could I open the door to her room, knife brandished._

_But I was too late. The scene before me was horrific. My mother was a corpse, the worst kind of it. Blood everywhere, gutted onto the floor. I hadn’t even heard the murder take place, I hadn’t even heard her die. There was just a gurgle and she was gone. But that wasn’t the worst part of it. Standing around her were a pack of horrific monsters, all the noise in the room sucked towards them, all the heat. My body felt chilled, and they stared at me as they stood over my mother. Any sign of a man in the room was gone, there was no one but the five terrors that hulked above her._

Demons. _My mind supplied the word before I could even consider them. Demons had killed my mother, and I hadn’t been able to move to stop them._

\---

                Dante stared at me when my story was finished, blue eyes wider than they had been before. Lady wore the same expression, shock, written on her face – I had never seen her so emotive, but then again I barely knew her. They both stared at me in silent shock, unmoving and unblinking.

                I took a deep breath. “She left me a lot of things, her pendant and some other important family stuff. Let me know how to get in contact with my uncle and my cousin. She left me enough money to get through high school but it was held until I was eighteen so I had to get my own job. I finished out where I was, but that’s when the demons started to get to me.” As soon as I had hit eighteen I noticed that they had been following me. “I’ve been moving around since I was eighteen, and it’s been ten years since then. Nicky and zio Angelo have taken care of me, kept me moving. They’re the only ones that really know what’s coming after me.” Nicky might have been the only one in Capulet that knew my secret, but that was only because my uncle, Angelo, lived just outside of city limits. He knew that I was being targeted by demons and he and his partner, Roran, had done well to keep me protected since my teen years. They were truly the only family that I had left.

                “Do you know _why_ there are demons following you?” The silence that followed my explanation was broken only when Lady spoke, setting her nail file down onto Dante’s desk beside a small picture frame. I didn’t get a chance to look at who was on it, because she kept speaking. “Or are you just being hunted down for no reason?”

                “Whatever reason that thing was in my mother’s room that night, it’s why I’m being followed.” I didn’t know if hunted was the right word, I’d never been hurt by the demons that were tailing me, strangely enough. Even in the shop tonight, I hadn’t been hurt. Just… traumatized. It hadn’t appeared as if the black eyed demon in the suit wanted to hurt me, only take me somewhere. “Who’s Lord Mundus?”

                “Yeah, that brings me to another question,” Dante sat up, bringing his feet off of the desk and slamming them onto the floor with a loud thump. I couldn’t help but jump at the noise, practically scared out of my skin by every loud noise that passed by. It didn’t get past me that he hadn’t answered my question, just deflected it with another one. “You were _talking_ with that demon.” He raised a snowy brow at me, his lips turned down into a frown. “In the ancient tongue.”

                “The ancient tongue?” I thought back to the conversation I’d had with the demon – he’d done most of the talking, after all. I had only said a few words to him, but I was certain that we’d both heard and spoken the English language.

                “Demonic. Enochian. _Daemonum lingua_.” Dante emphasized his last words, pinning me with a stare that I couldn’t quite describe. It wasn’t a glare but it certainly wasn’t the friendly face that I’d become accustomed to when dealing with him. “He spoke and you responded, kid, why do you know the old language?”

                “I was…” I frowned at him, my eyebrows coming together in the concern I felt that I hoped I was projecting to him. “I was speaking regularly. English. I don’t know any other human languages, minus a bit of Italian – and I _definitely_ don’t know any demonic language.” I attempted to stand to defend myself, emphasize the point that I was trying to make and appear stronger to the two devil hunters. But the night was rapidly catching up to me and the stress of being in such a warped place, of speaking with that demon and everything that had happened – it had drained me of the strength and conviction and I fell back onto the leather couch, my breath leaving me in a quick gasp.

                Dante was up in a second, the accusation out of his eyes and his voice, moving fast again, like lightning. He was at my side before I could even blink, holding me steady while I shook quietly on his couch. Lady had bounced off of his desk, looking for all the world like she was going to do something but it seemed that Dante’s actions both beat her too it and took her by surprise. She stared at the two of us, mild shock written across her face for only a moment before she was back to filing her nails, looking at us from the corner of her dual toned eyes.

                “Hey, don’t worry about it yet.” Dante muttered quietly, lips closer to my ears than was entirely comfortable. But if he hadn’t been, I doubted that I would have heard him, his voice was so soft. “There are things that you don’t understand. We’ll help you figure them out.”

                Talking in tongues and being hunted by demons into some strange alternate dimension seemed less of something that I ‘didn’t understand’ and more of some ‘otherworldly shit’ going on around me. I looked at Dante, unable to quell my shaking but still able to narrow my eyes at him.

                There were some things that were fishy about _him_ , too.

                “And what about you, hm?” I asked, able to find my voice again after a moment of staring him down. I could see out of the corner of my eye that Lady was looking back at us, her expression somewhere between alarmed and amused. “Healing from those cuts the night that I first met you? Standing down demons with nothing but a pair of leather pants and a sword? And that night that you spilled holy water all over the ground in front of the shop – don’t pretend like your fingertips weren’t burnt from it. You were able to find me in that other dimension tonight and time and space were warped all around us but you seemed fine while I can barely stand on two feet right now. And what about how fast you were able to run us back here? What was that red all around us?” My voice picked up volume and speed as I went, listing off all of the things that I had noticed were _off_ about Dante over the past two weeks. The shaking gradually died down, and when I finished I was sitting up straight, pinning him down to the couch beside me with a glare that could rival my uncle Angelo’s on his best day.

                Lady cleared her throat, hopping off of the desk once again and collecting her nail file and – unsurprisingly – a firearm or two from the desk beside her. She brushed off the dark jeans that she wore and strapped the guns on her thighs where they seemed to belong.

                “Right,” she started, heading towards the door with her familiar lilting gait. “This seems like an important conversation between the two of you so if you don’t mind me, I’m going to make sure that there’s no extra clean up to do around the shop.” She jerked her head in the direction of the open door while her hand landed on the handle, but Dante was up and stopping her in a second.

                “Wait." Dantefollowed after her, hand resting above hers to halt her hasty exit. He leaned closer to her to whisper something that he probably hoped I couldn’t hear, but his words carried louder than he thought they did because I caught every one of them. “Stop by her apartment, make sure there’s nothing out of the ordinary there. If they’re waiting for her, deal with them for me will ya? I’ll pay you back for the business in the morning.”

                “Sure, whatever.” Lady shrugged her shoulders and – I could have sworn – rolled her eyes at him like she didn’t believe a word he said. She pushed the door open with a turn of the handle and a cock of her hip, and before I knew it Lady was gone, leaving silence in her wake.

                Dante sighed, his shoulder sagging as he turned back to look at me.

                “Look, there’s no easy way to explain this,” he started, and I rolled my eyes, leaning back on the couch and crossing my arms over my chest. I stared at him expectantly, and he brushed his hand through his hair, shaking his head as he went. “I’m a demon.” He stated, so plainly and up front that I couldn’t quite grasp what he had said before he plowed on. “Half-demon, actually. My mother was a human, my father? The Dark Knight Sparda.”

                I honestly didn’t know what he expected me to do with that. The plainness with which he stated it, as if it were that simple to accept, was more affronting then the admission itself. His father was the legendary demon knight that saved the human realm by rebelling against his demon brothers and sealing them (and his own powers) into Hell. Those stories were in history books marked as legends, in anthologies of myths that had been collected throughout the centuries. The few that said that the Dark Knight had sons were fairly recent and regarded in certain circles as frivolous stories. And here Dante was claiming to be one of them.

                “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I stared at him, unimpressed with the joke that he must have been pulling. “Of all the stupid shit I’ve heard in my life, that’s somewhere near the top of the list.” And that was true, for the most part. Of all the things that I had been told, demons were coming after me, I was a cursed child, no one would love me – all told by fortune tellers and mystics that I could never quite trust – this was perhaps the most out of this world confession that I’d received yet. “A demon? I’ll accept that,” I conceded, carefully rising to my feet. My head still felt a little dizzy but this wasn’t a discussion that I could have sitting down. I stabilized myself and stared him down, my hands planted firmly on my hips. “But you can’t honestly expect me to believe that you’re the son of the legendary Dark Knight.”

                “Look, Doll, I wasn’t too keen on it when I found out, either.” That was rich. I stared at him, and while Dante didn’t sound aggravated I could see the tension rising in his shoulders and the scowl coming to a rest on his face. It seemed to fit better than that gentle smile I’d seen before. “It’s why I hunt demons. I hate the legacy my father left me.” And he sounded serious. But his voice was staring to rise and the throbbing in my head and the sensitivity of the situation was starting to dawn on me. Was this what Lady had left for? “But I can hear the ancient tongues and I can smell demon from a mile away. And I can smell it on _you_.”

                I hadn’t realized how much closer Dante had gotten to me before we were nearly touching. I could feel the warmth of his breath, the coolness of his skin. He was a good few inches taller than me, and this close I had to tilt my head back to glare up at him.

                “Are you accusing me of being a demon?” I asked, my voice icier than his eyes.

                “No.”

                “Then what?”

                “I’m accusing you of being just like me.”


	5. Taste of Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna be real, folks, I didn't edit this as well as I probably should have.

                And then Dante did something _incredibly_ stupid. He reached up, and time seemed to slow to a crawl, as it had in that Hell zone in the shop. I watched his hand move inch by inch, and though the movement seemed to take hours, Dante’s hand was up at my neck in seconds and grasping at the silver set gem at my throat. He yanked and the chain gave to his strength, gem and casing going with the motion. I felt sick when the necklace was gone from me, betrayed that Dante had even done such a thing.

                Anger pulsed through me, and against the pale skin of his face I could see a flare of light. Red light. Something shifted inside of me, nothing that I could pinpoint, but I knew it caused pain and I knew I was pissed. My hand darted out, quicker than I was used to traveling, in a blur of the same red, crackling with energy I had only felt barely half an hour ago when Dante had taken me back to his shop.

                My hand halted mid-air, the shock of the action and the speed and the strange energy surrounding it registering only a moment too late. I paused just a centimeter from Dante’s face, and I finally got a good look at what had happened.

                My fingers were inhuman. Nails elongated and sharpened into black talons, fingers curled and ready to claw at him. My skin was darker, almost grey and semi-translucent, the veins apparent and popping with the tension. They barely even looked like hands anymore, let alone my own. I stared in horror, following the trail of the mutation all the way down my arm where the grey skin shifted from translucence to almost _marble_ near the junction of my shoulder.  I couldn’t see past that, but I knew the same malformation traveled the rest of the way along my body. Up to my face. My hair. My eyes. I didn’t want to know the source of the red glow across Dante’s face.

                He didn’t even look impressed.

                “There it is.” Dante smirked at me, and for a moment I considered letting my fist keep flying directly into his smug face. But I was too horrified, too shocked by the thought of It that I hadn’t moved. It was that same shock that brought me out of it. As Dante looked down at me I could see my skin changing again, back to its regular tone, the translucence and grey color leaving me and my nails shrinking back to their bitten down sizes. The son of Sparda didn’t even step back. He only snorted a short laugh, holding out my mother’s pendant to me in an open palm between us. “The demon girl.”

                I snatched the necklace back, taking only a moment to mourn that the chain was broken from where he ripped it off of me. I tucked it safely in my pocket, comforted by the fact that it was on my person again. A wave of exhaustion passed over me, and the anger that I had felt at him drained out of me as quickly as it had come. I staggered back and crashed down against his couch.

                “I don’t understand…” I whispered, shaking my head. “I’ve taken my mother’s necklace off before…”

                “But this time,” Dante replied, sitting down beside me again. He gave off no warmth, and I found little comfort in his presence. There was lingering upset between us. “This time you were angry. And you’ve been exposed to devil magic all night. You’re coming into yourself. Awakening.” He leaned back against the red cushions, slinging his ankle up over his knee with a sigh, raising his arms up behind his back so that he cradled his head against his hands. “You’re much better off than I was, at least.”

                I let that sink in for a moment, frowning at him. Dante had never been quite so esoteric. Then again, I hadn’t known him for very long

                “What do you mean?”

                “When my demon side turned on. When I awakened.” He glanced over at me, snowy brow raised to make sure that I was following along. I could tell that this wasn’t a story he often told people. “My brother – my twin – he woke much earlier than I did. The night our mother died, I guess. I don’t know. I thought he was dead for a while but when we were eighteen? Nineteen? I can’t remember,” Dante sighed and it sounded almost like a forlorn little laugh came out with his breath. “He… did some bad things. There was a disaster in Capulet – most humans don’t know what happened, but he raised a demon tower, the link between the human realm and Hell that our father sealed off and… yeah,” he actually _did_ laugh when he saw my expression, confused and alarmed at the same time. “Yeah that about sums it up. Vergil was raised… differently. On his own. Probably in Hell. I don’t know.

                “But anyway,” he continued, shaking his head. “He was trying to get our father’s power and kill the demon king – Mundus,” He looked at me pointedly and I could tell that this was information that was important. Mundus. That name again. _The king of Hell._ “Mundus killed our mother because of a spat that he had with our dad. Vergil was still bitter. Always power hungry. Me? I didn’t want anything to do with it, but he had to be stopped. That power’s ours by right, but he… wasn’t going about it in a good way. He killed a lot of people to get what he wanted. Tried to kill me.”

                Dante’s hand raised up to his chest, and the movement had to be unconscious because he rubbed at a spot with the heel of his palm like he had heartburn, staring across the room at nothing in particular. I almost wanted to tell him to stop. To shut up. Don’t talk because it clearly wasn’t doing anything good for him.

                “Ran me right through with my own sword. Hurt like a bitch.” He was rubbing over his _heart_. Had that been where his brother stabbed him? I wondered how he was even alive. How could he speak so nonchalantly about this? “It kicked started the latent demonic energy in my body. Kept me alive when I shouldn’t have been.” When I had seen him shirtless – there hadn’t been a scar. Was that because of his demon powers? Would _I_ have that? “But I _full_ triggered,” he turned his body to look at me, regarding me with a look that told me I should appreciate what I had been given. “Whole body changed. Went full demon and everything. You? You’ve barely even tapped into your powers, Dollface.”

                It took Dante being stabbed with his own sword – that massive, ugly claymore he carried around – to fully awaken his powers. I’d just gotten a little pissed off at him and that tiny change had hurt so much. The amount of power it would take to awaken the demon inside of me… I shuddered, shaking my head to rid myself of the thought. That was too much, too alarming.

                “Dante?” I asked, my voice quiet, the anger that I had felt earlier drained completely from my tone as I turned to look at him. There was concern on his face, but that didn’t matter to me. “Dante, what’s going to happen to me? Who _am_ I?” That was the important question. Who had that man in my mother’s room been, and who was that black eyed demon that had spoken to me through the glass of the fake shop earlier?

                “Well, that all depends, Doll,” Dante remarked, sitting forward. He laced his fingers together and stared down at them, and I knew in that instant there was something he wasn’t telling me. “What’d that demon say to you?”

                I took a deep breath, nodding. I hadn’t been ready before, and that was what led me to this. To being so angry with Dante that I practically clawed his face off with demon hands that I wasn’t aware I even had.

                “The master has only sent us here to bring you home,” I quoted, and the words felt strange in my mouth. I could hear his strangely melodic voice in my head and it instilled me with the now familiar sense of terror of being trapped in that place. “He told me that the Lord Mundus has been waiting for me to come home. That I shouldn’t fear them.” I shuddered, the memory of his voice in my head, of the knowledge that I had been speaking with him in some different, ancient language haunting me. “He was about to tell me more but you put a sword through his chest.”

                “Yeah, that’ll happen,” Dante laughed, but I couldn’t see the humor in the situation. Maybe it was a demon hunter thing. “More importantly,” he rose off of the couch as he spoke, going back to his desk with a purpose. “We’ve gotta keep you-“

                Dante was cut off by the ringing of his phone. He stared at it for a moment, a frown on his face, before he picked it up.

                “Devil May Cry.” A pause. I could hear a woman speaking on the other end. Lady?

                “Yeah, I thought so.”

                She said something else, and though I couldn’t make out her words I could hear her voice. She sounded pissed off. Dante’s expression morphed into a frown.

                “Forget it, Lady, I’m doing what I can.”

                I was right. I remembered what he had told her before she left. He’d sent her to my apartment, to make sure things were okay. I couldn’t stop the spark of fear that passed through me.

                “I know, woman, let it go. I’ll call her, I’ll call her.”

                Her? Dante seemed to surround himself with women. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised by that.

                “Alright. Catch ya later, Lady.”

                When he hung up the phone, Dante turned to me and frowned, and I could tell that whatever he was going to do before Lady called, things had gone awry.

                “Plan’s changed, Dollface,” he said, leaning against the back of his desk. “Lady just called. Your apartment is swamped with demons, and there are too many for even her to handle, which means there’s gotta be plenty. I _was_ gonna give you some wards and send you on your way, but that’s not an option anymore.” He sighed, passing a hand over his face. I had always hated being a burden on Nicky and my uncle, and now it just felt worse to do to this practical stranger who had already more than once put his life on the line for me.

                “I have some extra space upstairs-“

                “Dante-“

                “You’ll be safe here while we figure something out to-“

                “ _Dante-_ “

                “The shop is warded, more than your apartment is and with better magic behind it-“

                “ _Dante!_ ” I stood up again, my voice raising louder than it probably needed to be. I couldn’t let him keep going, I couldn’t let him keep talking when I knew what he was already going to say, and I couldn’t let him say it. When he went silent, eyes widening in surprise at me, I continued. “I can’t let you do that.”

                He stared at me still, for a moment longer, the silence between us so thick it could have been cut with a knife.

                He let out a loud belt of laughter, doubling over with the force of it.

                “You’re cute, Dollface,” Dante laughed, shaking his head. “Real cute, but that’s not gonna cut it,” he added, his tone going serious so suddenly that it startled me. “You’re in danger. You’re being hunted by demons. Powerful ones. You’ve gotta be kept safe and we’ve gotta get to the bottom of it.”

                “Yeah, but _I’m_ a demon,” I defended, standing taller, squaring my shoulders so that I could get up to his height, his confidence. Somehow, I still felt like a small child standing up to an overgrown adult. “I can protect myself, I have been for years.”

                Dante snorted out a laugh again, and this time he actually seemed genuinely amused.

                “ _Okay_ ,” he laughed, rolling his eyes at me. “Okay, right. You’re a demon too, that’s a good one. You _are_ a demon, but you’re only half a demon. And you’re not even fully awakened yet, you have no idea what your lineage is, and you don’t have a clue on what your powers are or how to actually fight.” I opened my mouth to object but he kept dealing the truth that I didn’t want to admit. “You don’t know what you’re doing and you’ve been living the past decade on hastily crafted sigils you found on the internet and some two-bit psychic’s advice. Face it, kid,” Dante raised a snowy brow at me and I slumped, defeated. “I’m your best bet.”

                “Fine,” I muttered, staring down at my feet. “You’re my best bet, sure, but… You shouldn’t be doing this for me. You have no reason to.”

                “You’re bringing more demons into my city.” Dante’s tone darkened, and for the first time I was afraid of what might come after. “You’re threatening the people that I vowed to protect with your very existence here. You’re the beacon that’s bringing in more and more powerful demons trying to get you. If Mundus wants you for whatever reason, he’s not going to stop, he’s not going to give up.” He stared at me, blue eyes dark, swirling, no longer the ice that they had been before but a deep sea of emotion.

“Plus,” he added, lightening up immediately, eyes going bright again and smile going wide. “You’re just bringin’ in more business for me, baby.”


	6. Bearings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lateness! I fall in and out of being able to write certain things, and I haven't had a muse for this in a while. Here's a short little chapter while I gather my bearings and get back into the swing of things. - Sam <3

“It’s late.” Dante was the first one to break the silence that followed. “You’ll get caught up in a police investigation tomorrow, one that I’ll be involved in, no doubt.” He added the last part with a sigh. “C’mon, Dollface, follow me.”

                I didn’t have a moment more to think. Dante was up on his feet and walking again, crossing the shop towards the spiraling metal staircase that led to a shaky metal landing. I managed to crawl back to my feet to follow him up, a few steps behind his long stride as we made our way up to the almost-not-quite second floor of the shop. There were three doors in a row, wooden and worn, and Dante stopped at the first, throwing it open with a shove of his shoulder against the stuck paneling.

                “Here.” He stepped inside, not bothering to flick on the light while I leant in the doorway, left wondering if he knew the place well enough or if he simply wanted to conceal the mess that was scattered along the floor. This was clearly his room. Even just standing in the doorway I caught a wave of man and must while he moved about. Despite the dark I could see that the floor was covered in a shadowed lumpy mess, most likely clothes and towels scattered around. The only dim lighting came in from the shop proper behind me, the window in his room closed tight and the outside so stormy that the moonlight couldn’t possibly make an appearance. “This is my room. You can take these.”

                Without looking very hard, Dante leaned down and plunged his hand into the mess, easily pulled out two articles of clothing and turned to me. He held pajamas in his hands, a grey cotton t-shirt and red plaid flannel pants. I stared at them, at him, with a frown.

                “No way in hell am I wearing your-“

                “They’re not dirty.” He cut me off with a roll of his icy blues, free hand going to his hip indignantly. “You think I got time or energy to fold all my clothes, Dollface?” He scoffed, shook his head. “As if. Come with me.” Without paying me much attention, Dante shoved the pajamas into my hands, walked past me and guided me on with a gesture. “Bathroom.” Pointing at the middle door. “You can sleep in here.” He stopped in front of the third door, and I was pleased to note that it didn’t require as much effort to shove open as his own did.

                Tentatively, I peered beyond him into the room as he flicked the light on and was surprised to find a clean space, if a little dusty. There was a dresser, a desk, a surprisingly queen sized bed. A nightstand held an old lamp on it, and a haphazardly placed fashion magazine. The sheets were pink. I decided not to ask any questions.

                “Thank you,” I breathed, surprised at the gesture that he was giving me. “Dante, I-“

                “Don’t say it, Doll.” Dante stopped me before I could speak. “If I wanted you to, you would’ve already. Just sleep well, alright? You’ll be caught up by the police tomorrow and then we can see if your apartment is any less surrounded by demons so that we can get some of your things.”

                Wait a minute-

                “My things?” I asked, frowning as I stepped into the room, looking back at him through the doorway in a frighteningly familiar scene. “If my apartment isn’t covered in demons I’d _like_ to go back home.” If it was safe, I wouldn’t be staying here. This arrangement with Dante wasn’t a permanent thing.

                But the demon hunter only scoffed, raising a snowy eyebrow at me in disbelief. “You’re being hunted by the prince of Darkness himself, you’re a newly awakened half-demon, and you don’t even know the scope of your new abilities.” He shook his head, scoffed again as if he couldn’t wrap his head around what he was hearing. “If you think I’m letting you out of my sight for a second, then you’ve got another thing coming.”

                I couldn’t help the noise of affronted dissent that escaped my throat, the objection bubbling up on my tongue, but Dante didn’t get a chance to hear it, with the way that he closed the bedroom door in my face. I stood there, shocked for only a second, before scrambling forward to open the door again, call to him as he moved to his own room.

                But he was gone by the time the door hit the wall behind it.


	7. Closet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus I'm so bad at writing holy shit. also updating. here's something kind of longer, though with a lot more introspection than usual. also! the character is named at this point, thanks to some help from a friend, so it's not reader anymore because I got way too devoted to her as the start of an OC, but her name won't be mentioned much more so if you'd like to supply your own? go for it kiddos, your interpretation of my writing is my favorite interpretation of my writing.
> 
> Have fun, and thanks for sticking around - Sam <3   
> ps. i must have opened and closed this document thirty million times trying to write so half of this chapter is well edited and the other half just doesn't care because it's past midnight and i'm sleepy

                I woke up without nightmares, to the sound of someone knocking at my door. For a moment I panicked, unsure of where I was. It was musty in the room, smelling of damp dust and old wood, and everything felt uncomfortably different. I was wearing pajamas that weren’t mine, in sheets that were unfamiliar, and more noises than I was keen on first thing in the morning. When it all came back to me I groaned, burying my face into the pillow.

                Another knock, insistent and harsh. This wasn’t Dante at the bedroom door.

                I stumbled out of the bed, dragging the sheets halfway across the room with me in my haste to open the door.

                A man in a well-fitting suit stared at me, eyebrows raising up in surprise briefly before he schooled his expression.

                “Lucinda Donato?”

                “Lu _cia_.” I corrected automatically, realizing how strange it felt to hear my name after I had been called _Doll_ for more than two weeks. Italians. I folded my arms across my chest, shielding myself against the chill and hiding my bra-less state from the detective. “How can I help you, officer?”

                “We’d like to ask you some questions about what happened at Paulie’s last night.” Of course.

                I nodded, cleared my throat. “Can you-  Can I have a moment, sir?” It was best to work with the law, I’ve had this happen in my past, getting mixed up with the police because of the demons that have been hunting me. The detective looked between the room behind me and the state that I was in and nodded, stepping back so that he was out of my space.

                “Take the time that you need, ma’am. We’ll be right downstairs.”

                I didn’t know who he included in the ‘we’ but I figured it was at least one other detective, maybe Dante as well. I wondered if Nicky and Paulie had been questioned yet, or if they were part of the ‘we’ as well. I nodded at the detective, and he turned, walking down the metal steps to the main shop while I retreated back into the bedroom.

                Almost immediately after the door shut, my breath caught, my heart bouncing somewhere between my throat and my stomach. I looked at my clothes from last night, mortified to find that they were covered in dust, the remnants of demons, from the night before. There was no hiding that – clumps of it were stuck in places that were dark, damp looking. I took in a deep breath, panicking for a moment before I decided that it was just better for me to stick around in the pajamas that Dante had given me. Still, I needed to clean myself up at least to a degree and do as much of my morning ritual as I could in an unfamiliar place.

                The bathroom that was between Dante’s room and the room that he had given me was simple. The floor was some sort of vinyl, the walls tile. The shower was a stand up that had a clear door that had been warped by heat and more than a fair number of scratches. The sink stood solitary, a square porcelain basin beneath a rectangle mirror cabinet set in the wall. The toilet sat on the other side of the surprisingly large bathroom, undisturbed with a toilet paper rack. Something like an end table stood just beside the shower, piled with folded towels. I wasn’t sure if they were red or if they hadn’t started out that way. There was plush carpeting characteristic of a college girl’s dorm, thick and pink, in front of the shower and the toilet, in front of the sink so that Dante’s feet wouldn’t be cold when he stepped in the bathroom in the morning. It was surprisingly clean, but I figured that at least one room in the shop needed to be, and it would probably be this one. There were three doors, one on the left wall that must have led to the hallway, one that I had stepped through and one opposite it, clearly the one that lead into Dante’s room.

                I was lost in thought staring at this door when it swung open.

                Dante was fully dressed and when he saw me standing in the center of his bathroom he let out a sigh of relief. “Cool, great, I thought you might be on the toilet or something when I didn’t hear you moving around.” He spoke softly and quickly, as if worried that the detective that went downstairs might hear us. “Take these.” I had been too flabbergasted at him barging into the bathroom to notice the pile of clothes that he held in his hands before he shoved them into mine. Jeans, a tank top and a sweater that was at least softer than the blankets that I had slept on the night before. The jeans belonged to a woman, and clearly the thank top did as well but the sweater was large and obviously Dante’s.

                “You just-“

                “Walked right into the bathroom, I know. Now listen,” Dante added, hushing me before I could be affronted by his interruption. “That detective? Is part of your uncle’s crew.” My uncle? I stared, mouth open and eyes wide in surprise. “He handles my cases, so he knows me. Knows what I do.” The whole town knew what Dante did, but I decided not to remind him of that. Some people still didn’t believe. “This has happened to some of my clients before, but they’re just going to ask you the basic things. How you got out, why you were there, what you saw. Reveal as much as you can without endangering yourself or the detectives.”

                That made sense. I didn’t want to put anyone in danger, especially if they were friends of my uncle. I thought back to the expression on the detective’s face when I opened the bedroom door to greet him. He must have recognized me, if not from Paulie’s shop then clearly from Uncle Angelo’s stories, perhaps pictures around his office? Maybe even Nicky’s doing. I’d been caught up in the police before, but not with any officers that knew me, even if I hadn’t known them. Still, I nodded, heeding Dante’s warning. Even if I _could_ get out the entire story, I’m not sure that even someone who handled Dante’s regular cases would get it. And he was right – endangering anyone was not something that I could do willingly. I’d already put he and Lady, Paulie and Nicky, at risk. I couldn’t hurt anyone else.

                “Take your time, you don’t want to freak out down there. They’re good people, if a little misguided.” I wondered what made Dante say that, but I trusted him. For some reason, I trusted him. “I’ll be right there with you. There’s an extra toothbrush in the cabinet, use what you need.”

                That was… oddly touching. I nodded, unable to say anything to that sentiment before Dante was out the door he came through, back into the dark pit of his bedroom.

                With clothes, I was able to feel a little more refreshed. I stared down the shower, considering it before deciding that the detective could wait a little bit longer. If he was really a part of my uncle’s crew like Dante said, he wouldn’t mind it, and I was sure that Dante would be able to hold him off from getting impatient. Especially if there was someone else down there with them. Nonetheless, I kept the shower short, speeding through washing myself, my hair, my face. When I was finished I took one of the towels, and upon closer inspection finding the tag that said ‘red, cotton’ I decided to ask fewer questions and surrender to the inevitability of whatever irremovable stains might be on Dante’s fabrics. I didn’t bother to try and find a hair drier, choosing to wrap my tangled mess in the towel while I dressed and brushed my teeth with the spare in the cabinet.

                I felt more human than I had since yesterday.

                I took stock of myself in the mirror, staring at the hollow under my eyes, how pale I felt and how miserable I looked. There were no nightmares when I slept but there had been nights prior, and I realized while I stared at the sagging skin beneath my eyelids that I had gotten to bed somewhere around four in the morning and slept only until… nine, I realized, when I checked the clock. Five hours of restless sleep.

                The tank top fit, Dante’s sweater swallowed me, and whoever’s jeans these were was remarkably even leggier than even Lady, with an ass that couldn’t quite even if it wanted to. I didn’t want to question Dante’s generosity, though the ever persistent voice in the back of my mind that sounded decidedly like Paulie reminded me, yet again, that Dante was nothing but a lady killing shark. These pants might be from a total stranger who lost them in Dante’s mess of a room during a decidedly hasty walk of shame.

                I tried to not let _that_ thought bother me, either, though I wasn’t sure why it should.

                I grabbed onto the waistband to keep them up as I shuffled onto the landing, ignoring the way the metal grating of the landing bit into the bare skin of my feet, cold and metallic. Beneath the grating, as I made my way down the steps, I saw Dante in his place at his desk, chatting lowly with the detective and the man that must have bene his partner. They both sat on the beat up leather couch, and though I couldn’t quite make out their words I knew they were, remarkably, not arguing with the demon hunter.

                When I landed on one of the creakiest steps that I’ve ever stood on in my entire life, conversation died and all three men looked up at me.

                “Well hey there, Dollface,” Dante grinned at me, the theatric smile I’d only seen as a public expression splattered across his face. A shark. I pulled his sweater closer around myself for some form of protection, but there was a part of me that wondered if he could see through it with those piercing blue eyes. “How ya feelin?”

                “Better, thank you.” I managed, smiling back at him with a mix between the sincerity with which I felt relieved and the nervousness that wracked through me as the detectives continued to stare.

                I really must have looked like shit.

                “Miss Donato,” The detective that had knocked on the bedroom door stood up when I stepped off the staircase and onto the wooden planks of the shop floor. He made his way over to me, handcrafted heels clacking against the wood before he came to an abrupt halt. He held his hand out to me in formal greeting, offering a smile that he hadn’t before. Genuine. “I’m detective Rossi, this is my partner Esposito. We’re working the investigation of Paulie’s place last night, and we’d like to hear your side of the story.”

                I barely had time to shake his hand before he had launched into his explanation, and so I nodded, a little dumbstruck for a moment. Sure, I’d been caught up in the police before but this? Was something bigger than I’d ever been involved in. Before I knew it, Esposito and Rossi were shuffling me towards the couch, sitting across from me against the dilapidated coffee table. I stared at them nervously, then looked to Dante, leaning casually in his chair still, not a care in the world. Could these men really be connected to my uncle? I was starting to wonder more and more what Angelo was doing with himself, but more importantly: did they really take Dante’s demon hunting seriously? What could I say here that would keep them out of danger?

                Dante, that fake grin gone, just flashed a thumbs up.

                Esposito must have caught the nerves in my glance, though, because he offered as consoling a smile as a member of the police force might be able to give someone that was involved with a grisly almost-murder. Their own grisly almost-murder, at that.

                “Don’t worry,” he said with a wink. “We know the gritty details.”

                So that settled it. They _were_ part of my uncle’s crew.

                And they knew about the demons.


	8. Questioning

I told them just about everything I could remember – which was a lot, all things considering. I was remarkably surprised that I could recall all of the details of the attack. The suffocation, the suffering, the pain that had occurred. I left out the part about the black eyed demon that told me that ‘master wanted to bring me home’. That seemed like too much for the detectives, whose lives I was still trying to protect from whatever demon had been hunting me down my entire life.

                And it hit me halfway through an explanation of how long this had been happening, after some further question from Detective Rossi.

                Demons had been following me my entire life. I’d only noticed just after my mother had died, but they had been following me since I was born. I recalled the story that I had told Dante and Lady about my mother’s murder. The demon, whoever it had been in the room with my mother that night, had been waiting for me. _It’s time._ The words rang in my head, as they had for eight years since she had been killed. It had been time when I was fifteen, and that only meant that running for so long meant I was sorely overdue, but for what I had no idea. Dante’s cell phone rang, the heavy metal music blaring through the silent shop. I barely noticed when he made his way up the metal grating and into his bedroom.

                The detectives seemed upset when they realized I had spaced out, their last question unanswered. Esposito snapped his fingers in front of my face, earning a scoff and a literal slap on the wrist from his partner.

                “Miss Donato?” Rossi raised a well-manicured eyebrow at me and I shook my head, clearing my thoughts and turning my focus back to the two men.

                “I’m sorry – what was your question?”

                “How long have you been… followed?”

                Followed, that was a nice way to put it. Even still, I couldn’t share my new theory that I’d been demon bait for my entire life with these detectives. It would be counterproductive to keeping them safe, and for some reason I couldn’t shake the feeling that the information would go less to the precinct and more to uncle Angelo. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that.

                “Eight years, I think? I started to notice it after my mother’s passing.” For added effect to my lie, I cast my eyes to the slatted floor, watching my chipped-paint toes curl into the worn wood.

                Both were silent for a moment, and when Esposito finally spoke, there was true sadness in his voice, which I wasn’t sure why I found surprising, knowing that they were my uncle’s men.

                “We’re truly sorry for your loss, Miss Donato.”

                “Lucia, please,” I corrected, offering them what I could of a bashful smile. “You already know me well enough.” They had just learned my life story, after all. Mother dead, hunted by demons. I took a little solace in the fact that apparently, a club was forming. Not to mention my uncle’s influence on them. “Is there anything else, detectives?” I didn’t want to sound eager to get them out of there, but my energy was already waning. I needed something to eat, some coffee. The shock was starting to set in and I wasn’t sure how long I could hold myself up. Dante’s sweater was too loose to keep me together for much longer.

                “No, I think that’s enough for now.” Rossi reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, pulling out his wallet so that he could hand me a plain looking business card, his name and cell number printed neatly in the middle of one side, his fax, email, and number at the precinct printed on the other. He and Esposito stood.

                “Call us to let us know if you need anything more, Miss Donato.” It looked like their dedication to my uncle kept things relatively formal between us. When I walked them to the front door of the shop, Rossi turned to look at me one final time before they left. “As it stands, even if you don’t believe it,” and I had no idea how I _couldn’t_ believe it, no matter what he was going to say. “The safest place for you right now is here with Dante.”

                “Don’t worry, detective,” I assured him as they stepped out onto the dilapidated patio. “I believe. It.” Even if it wasn’t my favorite arrangement, Dante had been too good to me thus far to turn down his hospitality, and that horrible claymore he carried on his back was looking friendlier and friendlier as the hours went by.

                When the detectives had been safely seen back to their car, I closed the shop door, leaning back against the ancient wood and sinking down to the dusty floor with a sigh. When I glanced up, the clock on the far wall behind Dante’s desk told me that it was just ticking to 11:35. Not even three hours and it felt like the day had gone on forever. It was remarkably quiet in the shop, the creak of the ceiling fan and the whining of the wood with the outside wind the only things to comfort me.

                Dante’s absence was present in the silence of the shop, and I realized, only after speaking with him for a few straight hours the night before, that Devil May Cry was nothing without his strangely calm but markedly boisterous atmosphere.

                When it became unbearable, I made my way up the steps.

                Dante’s bedroom door was only slightly ajar, held open by a thick sock that got in the way of the jamb. Upstairs it was better, and I could hear him speaking to himself, the only thing giving away his erratic pacing the shuffle of clothing and objects around him rather than his eerily light footfalls. No, not talking to himself. Dante was still on the phone.

                “I’m tellin’ you, Trish. S’what it looked like to me.” There was a pause while the person on the other end – this Trish, whose name made me wince in something like jealous upset – spoke in return. I could make out the sound of a feminine voice, but nothing even remotely similar to words. I pressed myself closer to the wall, listening in to his reply. “We’re talkin’ marble skin, red claws, red lightning. The whole shebang.” He paused, but I couldn’t hear Trish reply. He was either too far away across the room or she needed a moment to soak it all in. The clear upset in his voice made it seem like the latter. “Yes, there were glowing eyes. And yes,” a longer pause, pregnant with history between Dante and his conversation partner that I couldn’t even fathom. “There were three.”

                Trish’s resounding _“Shit.”_ was definitely loud enough for me to make out.

                I realized, with a horrible shock, that they were talking about _me._ The demon that I had turned into the night before, the monster that had threatened to take out Dante’s throat with one swipe of her horribly sharp nails.

                There was some significance here that I was missing. A stranger wouldn’t have reacted that way to my transformation if it wasn’t big. Part of me was interested in the idea that I somehow sprouted another eye during the shift into my slightly more demonic form, but there were more pressing matters to delve into at the moment. Like Dante’s conversation with the mysterious Trish, and why my appearance as a… a _demon_ meant so much to them.

                “I- I don’t know what to do, Trish.” I had only known Dante for a short time, and the total hours of interaction between the two of us could only have accumulated up to about a day or two, but I had never heard him sound like this. Unsure, upset. He almost sounded afraid, but I didn’t want to let that thought take over. Dante was a demon hunter. He’d saved my life countless times already with a great sword that was more than half his size and more evil looking than the demons he felled with it.

                But mostly, I didn’t want Dante to be afraid because I knew that meant that I had to be scared absolutely shitless. Dante was strong. Dante was powerful.

                I was a weak looking nobody with a talent for getting into trouble that had stuck around for my entire life. If Dante was afraid, what did that mean for me?

                He hadn’t spoken for a moment, and I could tell he stopped pacing once the sound of the detritus shifting around on his floor silenced. There was a collective puff of air and a muffled thump – Dante’s sigh as he sat at his bed?

                “Then I guess that’s the only thing I _can_ do.” He seemed exhausted when he spoke, and I realized it was in reply to something that his conversation partner had suggested. Dante hadn’t known what to do about the situation that I could barely even guess about, so I had no idea what she could have possibly suggested to make him say that. What was the only thing he could do?

                Suddenly worried, I turned away from his door, hurrying down the hall to the second bedroom where my bloodied clothes lay sullied in a pile on the floor. I gathered them up hastily, my mind jumping to the worst conclusions. Half-devil or no, Dante was a demon hunter, and what was I but another piece of prey? I was a practical stranger compared to his friends – Lady, and whoever this Trish was. He’d kept me alive thus far, but I was a danger to him and his community and all of his friends and business partners. An unknown entity that he clearly worried about for the sake of others who could be involved. I didn’t doubt that someone he trusted could lead him to the conclusion that I deserved to die.

                My socks from the night before were blessedly free of demon gunk so I slipped them on my feet, hastily shoving my shoes on and pushing the laces into the sides so that I didn’t have to waste time tying them. With my ruined clothes tucked under my arm I went to the bedroom door, opening it as quietly as possible so I could make my way down the hall. Eyes like this, on my feet to make sure I stepped lightly, I barely even registered he was there until I ran directly into his chest.

                “Going somewhere?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say thank you to everyone that's commented and given their love to this? Your continued support gives me ever more motivation to write and I'm always so exceedingly happy to see the notifications that continue to pop up about this in my email. Thank you all so much for the love that you've all given - your support means the world and keeps me writing. Thank you all! - Sam <3


	9. Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First prize goes to the person that guesses who it is correctly!

Looking back, I’m not entirely sure why I thought I would be able to get away from him without him noticing. The floorboards in the shop creaked in ways that only he knew, and if his eerily powerful strength was anything to go by, I should have guessed that he had a few other extranormal senses as well. Hindsight’s a bitch, and she played me like a damn fool.

                At least I knew he wasn’t on the phone anymore.

                I gave him my best innocent smile, sheepish as a… sheep.

                “Would you believe me if I said the laundromat?”

                “Not on your life.”

                Though one snowy brow was raised in confusion at me, blue eyes glittered warm and inviting. He took the clothes from my hands, tucking them under his arm and seemingly not caring about the obvious demon goo all over them. He smiled pleasantly.

                “I can take care of that.” Like he knew that I was planning on running. He was right, of course, but I couldn’t actually tell him that.

                That warm smile of his suddenly didn’t feel so warm in the light of my recent revelation. I was counting minutes here, instead of the days that I had been counting before. Dante could end my life in a heartbeat. I was almost sure that he didn’t even need that claymore of his to do the job, either. If I had what he referred to as a partial devil trigger, and Dante had already gone through all of it? I’m almost positive that Dante could take me out with his bare hands.

                “I-“

                “You were listening to my conversation with Trish, weren’t you?”

                “No? I would never-“

                “Lucia-“

                It was the first time that Dante had used my name. Not Dollface, not Doll, not ‘Hey, kid!’, but Lucia. And that’s what did it. Anxiety and fear that had been welling up in me since I had noticed the rain start falling the night before finally exploded, leaving in its wake an entire mess to clean up in my mind and my heart that left me a crumpled mess on the floor in front of Dante. Inexplicable, inescapable, and completely not understandable to anyone that wasn’t in my own mind.

                Dante stared down at me, on the creaky old floorboards, and sighed. He sat down beside me, depositing the clothes on the floor and wrapping his arm around me, instead. For such a big guy I had half expected him to be warmer than he was, but his arm felt cool where it touched the skin at the back of my neck, and his touch didn’t burn through the fabric of the sweater he had given me. It made me shiver harder, the tears coming faster now, but only for feeling so foolish that Dante would go through the trouble of saving me so many times only to just kill me later. On top of the stress of the past few nights, the fear, the confusion, worse than all of it? The guilt wracked at me and I couldn’t help myself from curling into his side, wrapping my arms around his middle without really thinking about it.

                “I’m sorry, Dante,” I whispered through the sniffles, only barely comforted when a large hand landed against my back to pat it gently. “I’m sorry.” For trying to run, for not trusting him, for all the trouble I had put him through, or even just for this. I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for, but Dante seemed to take it in stride. I wondered how many people he had comforted like this before, or if he even had. I had only known him for a few days, at most, but he didn’t seem like the type.

                “Don’t worry about it, Doll,” he laughed lightly, and I found comfort in that, too, in the name that he called me. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

\---

I didn’t really want for him to leave me alone, but it had to be done. I was too wet behind the ears to go with him to my apparently demon-infested apartment, and frankly, I didn’t want to. There were things that I needed, clothes so that I could stop stealing his, my soaps and my keys and the few mementos that I’d kept this long from my old life. But he told me to sit back, to relax, and to not let anything scare me. I was safe here. Dante continuously reminded me of that, pointing out the wards hidden under the wall panels and letting me watch as he renewed the ones that were starting to fade they’d been there so long. He told me not to worry, that he and Lady would take care of things, and that soon Trish would be there to take care of me and keep me company.

                And still, watching him leave with that heavy sword of his on his back made me feel more alone and afraid than I had since I was a teenager.

                Worse yet, part of me just didn’t want to meet Trish. I didn’t have anything against her, but the conversation that I had heard Dante having with her on the phone had unsettled me. I had no idea who this woman was, if she trusted me, if I could trust her, or if she even wanted to keep me alive. Clearly Dante did, and I don’t think that any of his friends would have gone against his wishes in this regard, but if Trish held some kind of grudge over me because of who my parents were, then how could I ever feel safe with her?

                I took these thoughts with me to the spare bedroom that I was starting to realize was going to become my own. Curled up in bed, I used the last of my phone battery – before Dante came back with my charger, there was no way I was going into his room to borrow his – to watch a movie and distract myself. I could hear the storm from the night before still beating against the windows, and wondered if it might ever stop or if it was still supernaturally inflicted. Every so often there was a crash of thunder that shook the old glass pane, but I didn’t pay it any mind. The light in the room was dim and ambient, and with the rain splattering against the windows, it was easy for me to ignore the movie on my phone and drift off into a pleasant sleep.

                Until the doors to the shop burst open with the sound of crashing wood and thunder from the storm. I shot up out of bed, panic rising at the sound before I remembered the wards that I had watched him set.

                “Dante.” I sighed my relief, shaking my head. It was only Dante, returned home from his venture to my apartment. I was surprised that it had taken him this long. But then again, I had a lot of stuff for someone that moved around relatively often. Not to mention the place crawling with demons that he would probably have to stake out and then take care of before he got anything done. Maybe it should have taken him _longer_.

                The panic slowly returning, I made my way to the bedroom door, cracking it open so that I could look down into the shop below. The doors were still wide open, letting the rain spill into the threshold of the shop, but there was no one that I could see in the building.

                “Just the wind, then.” I assured myself, already making my way downstairs so that I could shut the shop doors. They were old and creaky and – much like the rest of Devil May Cry – falling apart and crumbling at the hinges. The storm outside was pretty ferocious, and it didn’t surprise me at all that, if not Dante, the wind could have blown them open on its own. Shoving the innate fear from my mind, I made my way downstairs and to the front doors, pushing them closed again to keep out the elements. There were dirty towels that I saw in the bathroom hamper, and I was going to go get them and dry up the mess on the dusty hardwood when it happened.

                A giant sword, unfamiliar and black, swung down at me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> then again, I made it pretty easy for you guys, I think <3


	10. Answers

My mind didn’t have any time to react, so my body did it for me. In hindsight, I don’t know what raising my hands to hold back the blow would have done to stop the massive blade from cleaving me in two, but that didn’t seem to matter to the adrenaline coursing through me then and there. My hands flew up, fingers locking together to stop the sword from coming down on my skull.

                It didn’t work.

                Pain seared through me.

                I realized far, far too late that the sword wasn’t the cause.

                When I finally looked back up at where the sword was clasped in my hands, I could see the now-familiar marbling of my skin. The dagger-like claws that my nails had turned into were holding the blade at bay, just barely. The two ground against each other and I was surprised to see sparks flying between them. My arms ached, the force of the blade having been pushed through my entire body when my nails caught it mid-blow. The burn that ran through my veins was from the change into my semi-demonic form, followed quickly by the ache from the absorbed strike. I could see the glow of my red eyes against the soul-dark steel of the blade, and I knew what I had to do.

                Mustering my strength, I looked beyond the sword to see my attacker, if only to get a good look at the person that would be killing me shortly.

                Go figure, it was a demon.

                Black armor, black skin – darker than the sword that he held, so that the minimal light in the shop seemed to be sucked right into the figure before me and emitted back only in the eerie yellow glow of his eyes. Curved horns spiraled down from the top of his head, marked with swirling patterns of red and that same yellow of his eyes that continued down his skull and over his face. The cracks between his armor glowed with a bright purple that did nothing to mitigate the pervasive darkness of the rest of him.

                “Princess.” His voice was a growl, and with his eyes narrowed down into slits I couldn’t help the jolt of unbridled fear that passed through me.

                “I don’t understand!” I cried in return, my voice mottled by the demonic energies warped around and within me. I had no idea what I looked like in this form, but I knew it couldn’t be pretty with the way that my voice was sounding. “What do you want from me?”

                My arms were shaking, ready to give out on me, my strength nothing in comparison to the beast’s.

                There was no chance I would be getting out of this alive. Much less with my questions answered.

                The door slammed open again, the wind and rain batting against me and throwing me off balance. The sword pressed further down as I slipped, and the guard of my hellish nails faltered. I was going to die.

                There was no further doubt about that in my mind.

                Another sword, gleaming and steel and vicious looking spun through the darkness of the night and caught the black blade by its point, throwing it airborne and surprising the dark knight. He jumped back far enough to catch his dark blade as the silver one landed down to pierce the wooden floor of the shop. The wicked sword with the skull on its hilt glared at me, but I no longer found it frightening.

                Dante.

                I turned to find my savior, and he stood in the doorway, staring in abject horror at the attacker as wet hair hung down, dripping in his face. _No, not horror._ There was something else in his eyes unfamiliar to Dante. I knew even demon hunters must feel fear, but there was more than that, here. Dante was less afraid and more… alarmed. Horrified, but not that a demon was there – more like… that this specific demon was there.

                It lasted for only a moment longer. The upset that was clear on his face morphed quickly into rage and the demon hunter darted forward again, a demon himself. He launched at the armored figure, pulling his sword from the floor and swinging it wildly at the beast. I had always assumed that Dante was a strategic swordsman – he had to be, right, to wield a weapon of that caliber? Yet there was nothing but that rage in his movement now, pain that I couldn’t understand or find the cause of. The hate that he seemed to harbor for this demon was so intense I could barely watch as he slammed his sword against it, the dark blade matching each of his movements with a strange finesse that didn’t seem possible for the weight of it.

                “ _Wait-!_ ”

                The creature spoke!

                Dante faltered for only a moment, but when he renewed his attack there was more precision there, more intent to deal damage. To kill.

                “ _Dante!_ ”

                It did speak! A dark, looming, somehow familiar voice emanated from within the mask of darkness that was his face. I couldn’t tell if the demon’s lips were moving or not or if it was just that – a mask. There was no shift in the darkness, none that I could see. It was just a sound, and it halted Dante in his tracks.

                “Dante.” This time, as he spoke, the demon’s mask – for that was what it truly was – melted away. The horns, the hellish lines through his dark face, all melted away, vanished in a breath. Beneath was a scarred man. His eyes were bright blue, but ringed with red, his face was marred by lines etched deep into his skin. He looked emaciated, cheekbones too high and skin too sallow, pale, and sickly.  His lips were almost blue, like he’d been frozen solid for years between each of his movements. His hair was silvery white, long and cascading as the black mask melted away.

                Were it not for his illness… he looked exactly like Dante.

                The swords fell from both their hands, Dante’s hitting the ground first with a loud clatter, but as the specter’s followed, it too melted away, much like his mask. Beneath the monster of a blade, there was a plain looking katana, the hilt corded in a white and black braid. It looked unassuming, but even from here, as with Dante’s sword, I could feel its power.

                “So that’s where that went.” Dante stared at the sword, instead of at the demon.

                “It took some time, getting it back from the child.”

                “Yours?”

                “Regrettably.”

                Dante seemed to bristle at that, but still he didn’t look at the other.

                “I knew not of his conception.  It would not have been so, otherwise.”

                “And that makes you dad of the year?”

                “It makes me… sorry. For his sake.”

                A moment of silence passed, and though their conversation was almost amicable, none of the tension between them had dissipated.

                “What are you here for?” As he spoke, Dante’s blue eyes flickered to me, and the stranger’s followed.

                “Yes. I’m here for the girl.” Dante’s body twitched at the response, like he was moving for his sword again, and I stepped back. I wasn’t sure when, but the marbled stone change in my body had reverted back and my soft, penetrable skin was only waiting for that sword to pierce right through it. I took a nervous step back, and Dante sidestepped to put himself between my body and the demon’s.

                “Relax,” the demon continued, his tone almost annoyed. “Listen before you cast your judgement.”

                “Why would I want to do that? I’ve been burned before, and you’re not going to take her back to-“

                “I’m not here to take her to Mundus.”

                Mundus. I felt my blood run cold. The King of Hell. He’d sent a number of demon’s after me already, what was supposed to make me believe that this one was telling the truth? The demon with the black eyes hadn’t lied to me, as far as I could tell. Could demons lie?

                “Then what are you here for, Vergil?”

                Vergil. Dante’s brother? The name was familiar from the tale that he had told me the night before, sitting in the dark in his shop. But Dante’s brother was supposed to be dead. I glanced between the two of them, and sure enough, despite the corruption on his face, Vergil was identical. Twins. The Sons of Sparda, standing right in front of me.

                Shit just couldn’t get weirder.

                “Mundus did send me after her, but he miscalculated,” Vergil added quickly, when he could sense that Dante was about to make another move and I took another step further back towards the storm thundering on behind me. Dante’s expression must have demanded explanation, because Vergil continued on, with more haste. “He assumed I was still his thrall, but your defeat of my spirit on Mallet Island released me from his bond. I’ve been playing his game ever since. I have been careful – assuming that he would either release me or send me after you once again. I was surprised when, instead, he sent me to fetch this.” He gestured at me as he spoke, but he barely spared me a glance. “Imagine my surprise when I found her with you.”

                “Then why the hell did you attack me?” Dante seemed as if he had been about to speak, but I beat him to the punch, frustrated that this was all going on without an answer to my most important question. If he wasn’t here to take me to Mundus, then what was he doing swinging that kind of a sword at me?

                Dante nodded his agreement, but said nothing further, staring down his brother instead.

                “I had to make sure you were who I was looking for.”

                “And slicing me in half was how you went about it?”

                “Of course.” Vergil had the audacity to look confused, as if there was no other way to go about his quest. “Only a true daughter of Mundus would have access to the third eye. I needed to see if you’d defend it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh it was totally Vergil! I realized way too late that I was using images as references that didn't have Nelo Angelo's sword glowing but y'all'd already figured it out, a few of you, so I just kept going. Anyway, here's some significant canon divergence for you because who even knows what's canon in this universe anymore. Thank you all for the lovely feedback! You continue to validate and inspire me <3 I'll try to get more out, now that I know where I'm going again and can remember everything I've plot. I love you all! - Sam <3


	11. Family Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucia finally meets her maker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everybody! Here's a doozy of a chapter for you, since i couldn't figure out where to stop or what was a good plot point after the Big Reveal. I'd like to take a moment to point you guys in the direction of a really cool tampermonkey script over http://harrisonwhales.tumblr.com/post/172353567059/deadcatwithaflamethrower-sanerontheinside here that helps the review process on AO3 fics. It's a great tool and it helps out fantastically!

Daughter.

                I suppose that I had always known that my father was someone powerful. More than some lower level demon that had been stalking the streets that happened on and forced himself upon my mother. He would have had to have class, poise, wit, and charm to wrangle her into bed. He would need to have been tender with her, and that just didn’t come from the average everyday demon. It fit with the voice that I’d heard in my mother’s room when I was fifteen: the strong, deep voice that had threatened her, demanded that she’d give me over to him. The voice of the person that killed her. Mundus.

                My father.

                The king of Hell.

                I staggered back, onto the front stoop and into the pouring rain. I watched in slow motion as Dante reached out for me, but I couldn’t do much to help him. I was staggering back, closer to the edge of the first step, and I barely even noticed when the crumbling cement gave out under me. I slipped on the pavement and the rain, tumbling backwards towards the sidewalk below.

                Everything went black, but before my head hit the pavement all I could feel was the warm, hard set of arms wrapped around me, and the smell of gunpowder and leather.

_“Ah. There you are, my child.”_

_He sat on a marble throne. Or… he was_ part _of the marble throne. All of him was marble, and it brought back a memory that seemed like it came from another time. Of anger at a missing necklace, and adrenaline as a sword fell through the air. He was stone, solid, and powerful. He looked angelic, and horrific at the same time. He sat on his throne and barely moved, his lips only just parting as he spoke down at me. His presence, the very air that moved around him, was oppressively evil, weighing down on me._

_He was Mundus. My father. I knew that without question, though I had never seen his face or heard him described to me before. It was in his voice, in the place that we met. He was powerful and evil. Knowing, though to know him was damning. He hadn’t needed to speak for me to know who he was. There was no question whose presence I stood in. No question whose throne room was soaked in blood. This was the King of Hell, and he expected me to know of it already._

_“Very good, you’re finally catching on, I see.”_

_I stared, shocked. My mouth hadn’t even opened but it was as if he had heard everything. It felt like he already knew what I was thinking before I had even thought it._

_“You’re getting there. Closer than ever.” He laughed, and though I was sure he was trying to sound like a father encouraging their child, it came out derisive and cold. “I need not know what you think, for I have already thought it. Your mind is your own, but your soul remains split. Half here, half in the human realm. We are one, my child. No small part of my power resides in you.”_

_A shiver passed through me, and with it, understanding. Finally, understanding. The demons, they would never stop hunting me. While I had this power, so long as I was connected to Mundus – and I knew that I would always be, for he had contrived it this way – they would find me. They would be able to track me down and bring me back to my father. But for what?_

_“For you are the key, my child.” He answered the question without me having to ask it. I simply waited for him to continue, knowing that he would go on and that even the questions I had not yet thought of would be answered before they came to my mind. That was his way. “You are the key to unlocking the true power that was taken from me in the dawn of time. You are the beacon that lights the path from Hell to the New World. Together, my child, we can rule even the Heavens! We are one, my daughter, and together – we will win. There will be nothing that can stop us.”_

I woke with the echo of a demon laughing in my mind, but all else was quiet.

                The rain battered at the window of the room that I had been given, and I curled up tighter under the blankets, comforted by their familiar smell. They gave me little warmth, but their weight was enough to give me some solace. And then I froze, confused for a moment on where I was. The blankets couldn’t be familiar yet – I’d only slept a single night in the room that Dante had pushed me into, and those sheets had been musty and thin.

                When I glanced down, I felt thousand-fold relief course through me. That was right, Dante had finished his venture at my apartment and brought back the blankets that had been on my bed. Bless the man. I pushed the blankets off of myself, shocked further to realize that I was put in my pajamas at some point. Someone had helped me get changed while I was passed out like that? I could feel my cheeks warming, hoping that it hadn’t been Dante.

                Or maybe… maybe I hoped it _was_.

                But that was silly, I brushed the thought aside quick. Dante was a good man and he had a kind heart, he wouldn’t take advantage of me like that. And whatever the case, any affection that I felt towards him had to stem from the fact that he had been a great help to me in the past couple of days and it drew me closer to him. There was nothing real there, and he certainly hadn’t shown that he felt anything for me. If anything, he was probably involved with Lady. Or his friend Trish, who I was still nervous to not have met.

                I swung my legs over the side of the bed, intending to make my way to the bathroom to take stock of whatever had happened to me since I passed out like that in the rain, but I was waylaid by the weakness in my knees. As soon as I got to my feet, my legs shook, unable to hold me up for some reason, and I crumpled right to the floor with a loud _thud_.

                “ _Shit-_!”

                I heard the expletive from somewhere outside the room, but I wasn’t familiar with the voice. It wasn’t Dante talking, but beyond that I couldn’t place it.

                Even when the door to the bedroom opened, I couldn’t quite figure out who was hovering over me until she was breast-first in my face.

                “Ah,” I stated, pretty underwhelmed by the situation as a whole. I had resigned myself to whatever fate may come of laying on the floor of a demon hunter’s home. “You must be Trish.”

                The woman snorted a laugh, but she lifted me effortlessly from the floor and sat me carefully back down on the edge of the bed. I wobbled a little, unsteady for a moment, and she held me still. When she sat back, I had my breath taken away. Talk about beautiful.

                Trish’s hair was long and blond, pushed back from her face and hanging down to her lower back, soft and smooth as silk. She smelled like strawberry body wash and she felt about as warm as Dante. Her shirt was nothing but a low cut corset and her pants were the tightest leather that I’d ever seen, but she smiled at me as comfortingly as someone that was shockingly gorgeous could.

                “And you must be Lucia. Glad to finally meet you.” Her voice was as calming as her presence was, low and soft. “You gave us quite a scare there.”

                “Us?”

                “Dante, mostly. His brother was concerned, of course, and Lady was worried.  I just got here a few days ago, but hey, even I was upset.”

                A few day ago? The fear must have been pretty evident on my face, because Trish’s expression dropped hard and fast. She looked down at her feet before she could look at me again.

                “You’ve been out for a week, Lucia.” A week, Jesus. I felt woozy again, though not quite as faint as I had been before I’d knocked out. “You’ve been shifting in and out of your demon form since then.”

                Was that really what had happened? I remembered my dream only vaguely, knew that I had met my father and he had answered unasked questions, but the specifics were lost to me. I’d been shifting back and forth between this form and that? Had I been here the whole time, or had my spirit absconded down to the demon realm to be with my father, leaving my demon form on the mattress while my mortal one stood before Mundus? I didn’t want to tell Trish about my dream, worried that I’d make _her_ worried. I wanted to see what came of it before I told anyone, because I knew they would all eventually tell Dante, and for some reason, my throat constricted at the thought of him knowing I’d had a conversation with the Hell King. I felt bad for ever having even seen my father’s face, let alone having spoken to him. I didn’t want Dante to know because… I didn’t want him to think I was a traitor, to have any belief for any moment that I would be loyal to Mundus. The man had killed my mother and sent demons after me for as long as I’ve known, probably even before that. There was no way I could be loyal to him.

                I was ashamed. Ashamed that my father had already caused Dante so many problems already and, through me, was only causing more.

                “Hey- you okay in there?” Trish brought me out of my thoughts and I realized only then that I’d completely spaced out on her, probably worrying her further.

                “Yeah- yeah, sorry, I just got a little lost.  A week – that’s a lot, y’know?” The lie tumbled from my lips easier than I was comfortable with. For someone that changed her identity and her life every few years, I tried to live as honestly as possible. Within the past few days that I remembered, I couldn’t count how many lies I had told. This one just seemed to add itself to the top of the pile naturally, and I couldn’t help but be disturbed, especially after my week long dream.

                But it wasn’t entirely a lie, and Trish’s sympathetic expression told me that she believed every bit of it. Part of me was a little winded at the idea that I had been out for a week. It _was_ a long time, and even if she could see past my omission, Trish didn’t say anything about it.

                “Do you need anything? Food, water?” Trish sounded more curious than anything, like she wasn’t sure how to take care of someone. I wondered, briefly, if she even took care of herself.

                But at her question, I was reminded that a week is a long time to go without nutrients, and my stomach seemed to agree with me. I wondered how’d they kept me alive this long, but thought maybe that some of Mundus’ influence on me might have helped that to a degree. My stomach rumbled eagerly, reminded that it was time to eat.

                “You were able to swallow broth and water, but that was about it. We should get some solids in you before you keel over.” Trish nodded, as though she was putting confidence in herself for this assessment, and stepped back from the bed, towards the dresser on the other side of the room.

                “Don’t bother,” I remarked, and she hesitated, hands poised to open the drawer. “I’m comfortable like this.” I gestured down to my pajamas. They were soft and comfortable, if only a little chilly. “Ah, here-“ In the corner of the bed, wedged between the mattress and the wall, Dante’s old sweater was peeking out from under the blankets. I wondered why it hadn’t been moved when they’d made the bed with my sheets, but didn’t question it. I pulled that on over my pajama tank top, pleased when it warmed me up and covered my clear lack of bra and sensible pajama shirt. “That’s all I need.”

                Trish stared at me for a moment, and I tried not to think of why a knowing smile spread across her face.

                “Alright, let’s get you downstairs.”

                It took some help from her to get me to my feet, and though I was by no means large and in charge, Trish swung me around like I was feather light. I shrugged that bit of information off. If she was a friend of Dante’s, she was sure to be involved in something that made that kind of strength necessary.

                When she opened the door to my room, I was greeted with a low babble coming up from the shop below. There were plenty of voices, and I only knew three of them.

                “Look, we got a few levels of daddy issues here kid, and I’m sorry but right now yours just don’t take priority.” Dante, speaking to someone who nearly snarled back, who was one of the strangers that I didn’t recognize.

                “Yeah, well we’re going to have to deal with it sometime, Old Man-“

                “You’ll have to forgive me-“ Vergil. The coolness of his tone sent chills up my spine, but I realized that it was only because it was the same voice that had revealed to me my fate.

                “I don’t want to hear anything from you, Asshole-“

                “Nero,” Lady’s voice, surprisingly enough. I don’t know why I thought that she wouldn’t stick around through all this mess, she had already helped us enough. Dante no doubt needed all the assistance he could get, dealing with the storm of demons that I undoubtedly led to his doorstep. “Right now isn’t the time.”

                “Yeah? Really, Lady? When will it be, then, huh? When am _I_ going to get some answers for once? When is this going to help _me_?”

                “Nero,” Another soft spoken voice, cutting off the tirade that this Nero had started. A brief flash of conversation, a memory from a week ago, reminded me that Vergil had a son. I wondered if this was the kid that Dante had been talking about. Vergil had taken his sword back from him but clearly hadn’t given him any answers. The soft voice continued, feminine and sweet. Definitely not a demon hunter, or one that hadn’t followed Lady’s school of Badass Women. It was too gentle for that. “We have all the time in the world for answers, after this. Someone desperately needs our help. You wouldn’t leave an innocent woman to the hands of the demon king, would you?”

                There was silence that followed, and in that moment Trish managed a grimace down to me that tried its best to look like a smile, and failed miserably.

                “That’s our cue.”

                The second we stepped down onto the metal landing, all the energy in the room seemed to focus itself on me.

                There was an audible gasp, and when I glanced down to the shop below I could only see Dante for a moment before he was gone in a flash, a blur of white hair and blue jeans before he was at my side. I had never seen him in anything less than leather, but it looked like the stress of the week had put him down in the dumps on his laundry. He wore a simple red v-neck and dark navy jeans that hugged his hips and thighs tight, like they were trying to escape the confines of the uncomfortable fabric. I didn’t have time to linger long on his fashion sense though because I was in his arms in a second, crushed tight against his chest in a grip that rivaled any wrestler’s.

                “Jesus, Dollface,” for once, the nickname didn’t rustle me. It felt comfortable and warm after a week of nightmares. “You scared the shit out of me.”

                I was so surprised by his tender moment, the softness of his tone when he spoke to me despite the crushing grip that he had me in, that I couldn’t respond. I was confused, of course. The air was knocked out of me, and my weak body could barely breathe in his grip, but most of all? I felt safe, comforted, and so emotionally overwhelmed in his arms that I had to work to just barely choke back a sob of relief.

                “Sorry about that, Dante,” I whispered around the lump in my throat, afraid that if I raised my voice any higher it would break from the emotion. “Promise not to do it again.”

                We stayed like that for a moment – Dante’s arms wrapped tight around me, my face buried in his chest and breathing in the smell of cotton and fabric softener from his shirt. Like this, I could almost forget that there were things that I had to worry about, people to meet and speak with. I could forget that there were things that I wasn’t telling Dante, secrets that I was keeping that I knew he – and the people he had enlisted to help me – should know about. I forgot, for a moment, that I was afraid.

                Our moment was broken by a gentle cough from somewhere below. When I pulled away from Dante, I could feel heat rise in my face. But Dante said nothing about it, and I made no comment on the dusting of pink across his cheeks. Looking around I saw that Trish had moved away from us, giving Dante and I the space that we didn’t know we needed. She was downstairs now, in the shop proper and standing beside Vergil, who was lowering his hand from where he had cleared his throat against it.

                It was a shock to see him again. A brief flare of anger passed through me, but I realized that it couldn’t be justified. Vergil had been threatened by his brother a week ago, and to prove his innocence he had simply told Dante what he wanted to hear, unaware that I wasn’t familiar with the relationship between Mundus and myself. After all, he had seen me with some degree of control over my demonic abilities when I fended off his sword attack, so it was safe to assume that _he_ had safely assumed I knew who I and what I was. I couldn’t fault him, even though I really, really wanted to – if only for a moment.

                “Come on,” Dante spoke softly, but he held me at arm’s length, looking over me as if to make sure I was unharmed after my week in a coma. I don’t know what he expected to see, but the examination seemed to last far longer than it should have. When he was satisfied, he pat me on one shoulder, slung one arm around me, and led me towards the steps. “Let’s get you something to eat and you can meet the team.”

                I knew most of them already, but Dante didn’t seem to care about that fact. It remained true that, despite having met them already, I had never been formally introduced to either Lady or Vergil, which was a shame, given all the help that Lady had lent to my cause.

                I was nervous, and Dante seemed to expect that so he took us to the stairs slow and steady. Only once I set my foot down off the landing did I realize that it wasn’t because of my nerves, but because of how weak I had become in the seven or so days I had been out. My knee nearly buckled under me, but Dante held me steady. He guided me down the spiral stair one hand on my lower back, one hand holding mine across his chest to keep me from toppling forward. Despite my pajama’d look, Dante held me with the grace and dignity of a prince escorting his princess.

                And for a brief moment, I realized that’s what we – essentially – were. The Son of Sparda and the Daughter of Mundus, two powerful Lords of the demon world.

                I shook the thought aside, and concentrated on walking. When we landed on the floor of the shop I was more out of breath than I cared to admit, and I knew there was no way to hide the shaking of my body and limbs from a team full of demons and hunters who were bound to have a more discerning eye than me.

                “Here, sit her down, Dante.” Trish moved quickly, shoving aside a few blankets and pillows from the old red couch so that I had room to sit. Someone had clearly been sleeping there while I was taking up the guest room. I tried to shove down how ashamed I felt of that, but the thought that I was displacing people wouldn’t displace _itself_ from my mind.

                I was embarrassed, but I tried not to let it show as Dante moved me to the couch and set me down feather-light and gentle. I could feel the stain of blush on my cheeks and wondered if it would become a permanent fixture, especially when one of the two strangers appeared in front of me. A young woman, undoubtedly the softest speaker from before. I hadn’t been looking into the shop when I was making my way down the steps, so I hadn’t seen her. In the time it took Dante to lead me downstairs and to the couch she had clearly retreated to the kitchen, coming back with a glass full of something that she held out to me in offering.

                I was confused at first before I realized what it was – a thick, light-brown drink that smelled like a malt shake and had a straw poking out of it. Was this their idea of feeding me? My stomach grumbled in protest, but the young woman smiled.

                “Don’t worry, it’s a calorie shake.” She offered it again, and this time I took it, looking down at the mixture while I wrapped my lips around the straw and took a pull of it. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her – to look at anyone in the room – while they offered their kindness. I felt alien and awful for hiding my secret. For making them care about me and barely knowing them. I’d caused a fuss and I knew it.

                “There we go,” the woman nodded, pleased with herself and pleased with me when I was clearly drinking the mixture. She sat beside me on the couch, giving me a wide enough berth for personal space but clearly there to keep me steady and to make sure that I drank the entire mixture. “We’ll get you something solid if you can keep the rest of that down.”

                I nodded, aware of what going a week without food would do to my system. I hadn’t done a whole week before, but in my time running from demons I’d come nearly close.

                “Lucia, this is Kyrie,” Dante spoke next, perching himself on the dilapidated coffee table while I managed to curl my legs under myself. “She’s a nurse in Fortuna, she’s been taking care of you.” I nearly choked on the shake, but managed to keep ahold of my surprise well enough to swallow the rest of what was in my mouth so I could express my appreciation.

                I knew what had happened in Fortuna. They needed all the help that they could get but she’d taken the time off to take care of me for a whole week? Kyrie could see the distress in my eyes though, and cut me off before I could say anything.

                “I mostly volunteer in Fortuna,” she stated, laying a caring hand on my shoulder that I swear actually radiated warmth. “Now that things have started to settle, the hospitals are well under control, and my time could be spared elsewhere, for more important matters.” I tried to object, but she shook her head. Clearly, they had filled her in on the Mundus Issue.

                “And that hot head in the corner over there is Nero.” Dante jerked his head over to the other side of the room, and when I followed his line of sight, a lot of things clicked into place.

                Nero stood with his back to the corner of the room, leaning against the wall and half glaring at nothing in particular. When Dante made his introduction he chanced a glance at me, but I was already looking his way when our eyes met.

                They were ice blue, narrowed with frustration that only made them brighter. The curve of his nose, the way he looked ashamed of himself when our eyes met. I glanced at Vergil and back again. Despite being raised by someone else entirely, Nero was every ounce Vergil’s son as Vergil was Sparda’s.

                Nero’s glowing demonic arm certainly tipped the scale, too.

                That was something I would have to ask about later. The set of Nero’s lips and the way he looked away from led me to assume he didn’t like being in the limelight – the arm was undoubtedly a conversation starter he’d prefer not to discuss.

                “And you’ve met Lady and Trish,” Dante continued, gesturing to the two demon huntresses that stood behind him, leaning against the pool table. “They’ve been helping Kyrie take care of you.” He must have added that in an effort to make me feel more comfortable, but the fact that there were more people helping me – who clearly had better things to do than watch over some coma chick – was only more embarrassing. Dante plowed on anyway, to get the formal introductions over with. He glanced at me to make sure I was still with him before he continued, though there was only one person left. “And this is…”

                I glanced at Vergil before Dante had a chance to introduce him. The last time that I had seen him he’d been in that horrible armor, glaring down at me with frightening eyes, throwing swords in my face and accusations of my bloodline so quick that I’d gone into a coma because of it. I remembered the lines on his face, marked in the same pattern that had been on the mask of the demon that attacked me. When I looked at him now, I saw them again. Scars, etched deep into skin pale enough to be called grey.

                Though he had looked more like a corpse than a person the last time I saw him, the week had clearly been good to Vergil. His skin was plumper, and he glowed with the same dark radiance that Dante did, cheeks full and eyes bright blue. His lips were still that blue of asphyxiated death, but somehow he looked less and less like a demon the more I looked at him. Part of my brain supplied that it was because he looked more similar to Dante now, despite his scars. The other part said that it was because he was _dressed_ more human than the last time we had met.

                He wore dark jeans that fit him well, over pointed boots that looked like Italian leather. They were held on with a belt that had a silver latch, but more for fashion and less because of how slim he appeared to be. He wore a jacket that reached down to his knees over a simple black button down shirt that looked more like silk than it did cotton, but neither took away from how clearly shredded he was beneath them. He’d topped it all off with a scarf draped over his shoulders, long hair tied back and out of the way. He looked like he had just come inside, but he was clearly dry despite the storm outside. I understood this immediately. Despite my shirt and Dante’s thick sweater, I was freezing in the drafty shop. Maybe it was something about demons. Or half demons. Who knew?

                As I sized him up, Vergil glanced at me and held my gaze once it landed on his.

                “Vergil.” Dante finished a moment later, staring between us. He was clearly aware of how we looked at each other and clearly disgruntled because of it. He said nothing, but the frown on his face that I caught out of the corner of my eye spoke a thousand words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And on that note, I've decided that I'm going to do Monthly Updates! I think that's a writing patter that I can keep up with, and it gives me a whole month of writing to do so I can give you guys long, decent chapters! I'm going to shoot for the last week of the month, so keep your eyes out! I love writing this fic and it's starting to get good writing it. Thank you all so much for your continued support! - Sam <3


	12. ft. Vergil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucia learns about her family, some interesting history, and perhaps the reason behind her being.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Throwing some real crazy stuff in here for you guys, just to ramp up the stakes. I hope you guys enjoy! A month to update means I have a month's worth of writing to read through, so I'm sorry it took so long but there's plenty of information to take in! Have fun - Sam <3

Conversation after that was kept relatively brief. Dante was worried that I’d strain myself, even with Kyrie’s assurances that I was strong enough to be able to keep myself sitting up and talking. I could tell that she was right – though my strength was certainly sapped and I was clearly exhausted, even after spending a week sleeping – but there was part of me, and a girlish part that I was embarrassed about, that wanted to let Dante fawn over me. It wouldn’t last long, and I wouldn’t let anyone onto what I was up to, but as long as I was allowed to lean on Dante’s shoulder and shovel crackers into my mouth without having to speak to anyone, I was happy.

                That didn’t stop conversation from going on around me, though. It was mostly dominated by Dante and his twin, but with interjections from Kyrie reassuring them both that I was safe and healthy, and from Trish and Lady letting them know that nothing would happen to me while there was a room full of demon hunters hanging around. Nero spoke rarely, but when he did it was with the confidence that even if he didn’t know me that well, he wouldn’t let demons make mincemeat of the shop. Or me. That was reassuring.

                When there was a lull in the conversation and the others had taken their breath, it seemed like the entire shop had taken a breath with them. The tension released, if only a fraction, and it appeared as though even the wooden floor boards released a sigh back into their relaxed position. As it had been for me in Hell, the week in the shop had been long and arduous.

                “I should call Nicky.”

                All eyes turned to me.

                Dante had the decency to look a little sheepish when I glanced around the room and everyone – save for Lady, who let out a snort of laughter that didn’t sound too encouraging – looked confused.

                I leveled him with a stare that was probably lessened in severity by the cracker crumbs lining my lips, but was baleful nonetheless.

                “You didn’t tell Nicky I was comatose, did you?”

                Before he could answer in return, Nero spoke up from the armchair that he had taken across the coffee table from Dante and I.

                “Who the hell is Nicky?”

                “Her cousin.” I heard the familiar voice and expected it was Dante coming to my rescue, keeping me from having an actual conversation with someone that clearly didn’t want to speak to me, but when I missed the familiar rumble of the chest that I was resting against realization struck like a stark slap in the face. I glanced at the other armchair, directly across from Nero’s and watched as Vergil raised a snowy brow at me, daring me to challenge him. “He’s heir to the Donati crime family.”

                Crime family? I stared at Vergil, floundering for questions that I wanted answers to, but ones that I couldn’t ask at risk of sounding like the stupidest person in the room. Something I wasn’t quite willing to give up. I had always known that uncle Angelo wasn’t in the best particular business, but… crime family? Vergil must have seen me floundering, but the expression on his face was caught somewhere between disappointment and frustration. His lips fell into a flat line that somehow still looked pursed as an old schoolmarm’s.

                “You didn’t know.” He stated it, as though it was a plain fact and not a question.

                “Of course I didn’t know!” I half shouted, making sure to keep the crackers firmly in my lap when I threw my hands up in frustration. It was the most excitement that I’d had since last week, and my system was clearly upset by it, but I wouldn’t let Vergil be the one to keep revealing family secrets to me. “How come _you_ knew?!”

                I glanced around the room for support, and everyone seemed just as shocked as I was. Until, of course, my gaze landed on Dante and his expression was the right amount of chagrin that I had wished would appear on his brother’s face.

                “You- Dante, you knew?” I looked at him, searching his eyes for answers, and I found them all there. Dante knew what my family was, and he hadn’t told me this entire time. I thought of Detectives Rossi and Esposito, how they had said they were my uncle’s men. He had told me they were the ones that handled his cases, that they understood the work he did as it involved demons. If _they_ had understood this much, and they were part of my uncle’s crew – I tried not to think of the implication that they were dirty cops, after how good they had been towards me – then how much did my uncle know?

                It looked like I would be making more than one call to the Donato family household tonight. But first, there was another matter to deal with. With this new family that I had found myself a part of.

                “You knew, and you didn’t tell me?” I repeated my question, shifting away from Dante on the small couch, despite the fact that his far greater mass dipped me towards him anyway, no matter what distance I tried to put between us. “So what, have you been making deals with them?” No, that was the wrong question. If Dante knew them at all he wouldn’t be making deals, and I had no room to shame the family that had helped me live my life as safe as I had thus far. “Did they know about you – the jobs that you do, what kind of clients you take?” I couldn’t keep the accusations out of my voice, and I would have risen up off of the couch if I wasn’t terrified of toppling over and losing my own argument. “Did you already know my family better than I did? Have you been fronting with Nicky while I was in the room this entire time? What else aren’t you telling me, Dante?”

                As I got more upset, I could feel the heat and the anger rise with my voice. A cursory glance at the rest of the team let me know that there was shock in their expressions but nothing else. No one moved to Dante’s defense. I don’t think they thought he deserved it, but as far as I knew, no one was about to step in the way of Mundus’ untrained daughter while she was about to go on a rampage.

                “You-!” I turned my head, faster than I should have. The snap of my neck when I whipped around to face Vergil made me dizzy, but I tried not to waver or wobble too hard and expose my weakness. Vergil’s brow raised in surprise, and my voice softened immediately. I couldn’t be upset with him – he had made yet another conclusion about my relationship and knowledge of my family, and it was only a logical conclusion to make. “Vergil,” I continued, softer this time. “May I- speak with you?” I cast my eyes around the room again, then looked down at my hands. “Privately?”

                Vergil looked between Dante and I and shrugged, pushing out of the seat that he was in and moving his way towards the stair case. I heard someone scoff when he stood and walked over, but I chose to ignore it and instead to focus my energy on getting myself off of the sagging couch so that I would be able to follow him. But to my surprise, Vergil stopped beside me and held out his arm to help me stand. I stared up at him in shock for a moment before I used his steady hand to pull myself up off the couch.

                Ever the gentleman, he wrapped his arm around my back once I was on my feet, however unsteady, and took my crackers in his other hand so that I could hold onto him with both of mine. He led me up the steps and into my bedroom in half the time that Dante had led me down, and while I felt twice as exhausted I was glad to be away from the crowd. And even out of sight of the others, Vergil was gentle with me, setting me down on my bed and putting my crackers in my folded lap.

                “Now what is it-“

                “What else do you know about my family? Any of my family.” From Mundus to Angelo, I needed to know everything. Any missing information would hinder me in the long run, and if we were going to do _anything_ about my situation, I would need to be filled in on the missing parts.

                Vergil sighed, glanced around the room, and lacking any better options, sat at the other end of my bed, perched on the edge as though he would be ready to fly up off of it at any moment. He seemed to think for a moment, and then glanced at me.

                “Where would you like to start?”

                “Do you really know _that_ much?”

                For a brief moment, a look of shame actually crossed Vergil’s features but it was so short that I almost missed it. He passed it off quickly though, and cleared his throat to distract me from whatever emotion that I had seen him express. Guilt. He knew more than he had already told me.

                “Okay,” I started again, sitting back against the wall partly so that I could look at him, but mostly so that I could steady myself in case things got weirder than they already were. “Let’s – let’s start with _how_ you know all that you know.”

                Even worse, the guilt didn’t go away. Vergil just cleared his throat, looked away from me and clasped his hands together in his lap.

                “Mundus sent me to find you long ago.” Not the first thing that I wanted to hear, but the most likely. I had no reason not to believe Vergil, and for some reason I felt… comforted by the fact that he had been there. After all, he hadn’t been like the other demons, he’d been… well, Vergil. I don’t know if he was stopping any of them from coming after me at all, but I’m sure he was the one that kept Mundus at bay from sending scores more. “I spent… _much_ of my time finding out who you were, exactly. Gathering information so that I could ‘take it back to him’ as it were. I kept my reports watered down and half-truths, and he had no reason to suspect me, thinking that I was still in his power. The Hell King’s hubris is what will eventually be his downfall.

                “In any case,” he continued, glancing back at me just once, so very briefly, before he continued to address his folded hands. “I’ve been watching you and your family for… quite some time. You’ll have to forgive me for not waylaying more demons – you see, that _would_ have made me entirely suspicious to Mundus. I suspect I’ll have to return to Hell shortly anyway, he’ll likely be concerned that I haven’t returned to him in quite some time.” A short frown creased his lips, and I knew Vergil was upset about having to return. I couldn’t imagine _wanting_ to be a slave to that creature.

                Vergil cleared his throat again and I watched in shock as he actually got _comfortable_ , lifting his legs so that he could cross them over each other, hands still folded in his lap though he rest back against the corner of the wall. He looked… fragile. The years in Hell, under my father’s control, had really hurt him. The scarring on his face told a story in itself.

                He thought that Mundus didn’t know he wasn’t Nelo Angelo.

                Mundus had been in my head for an entire week – some of which I was unaware for. He _knew_ everything that I knew. Even when I _was_ aware and we had been… speaking, for lack of a better term, he heard my thoughts, answered my questions before I could ask them. He had said that my soul was attached to his – part of me would always be in Hell.

                Mundus already _knew_ that Vergil was no longer Nelo Angelo.

                I swallowed my words, terrified by the revelation. I could already feel it seep into my bones that I would never sleep again. So long as Mundus could get into my mind while I wasn’t one hundred percent in control of it, I would never relinquish that control.

                “Lucia?” Vergil looked up at me again, and I was struck by the brightness of his eyes. No longer rimmed with red as they had been the first night I saw him, he was ten times more alert than his brother appeared, and all the more wary. One snowy silver brow raised up at me, his neutral expression at war with the confusion and concern in his eyes.

                “Sorry I- was thinking. About how much you know about me, and how little I know about, well… everything.” Good. Great excuse.

                “Right, forgive me, I’ll continue.” Vergil situated himself again, trying to get more comfortable when he looked, for all the world, like he’d never be able to. “In my… time watching you and your family, I discovered a number of interesting secrets. The first of which, you might know, is that Mundus killed your mother in his first attempt to bring you back to Hell with him.” He glanced up at me to see if this was new information. When I only nodded, he continued.

                “The second, slightly less important but no less dramatic, is that your mother and her brother – your uncle – were heirs to a crime family.” This piqued my interest, but with the secret already out, Vergil continued without much pause. “This was a fairly recent discovery, within the past two years, but it’s shaped your entire life. Your cousin, Nicky, has been helping you since you left home, has he not? It’s been on order of your uncle to make sure that you remain safe. Your mother inherited no small portion of the family fortune, and it was passed onto you. This comes with… familiar responsibilities and-“

                I shook my head, waving my hands to halt him. This was more than I needed to know. The more I was in the dark about my human family’s activities, the better. That money – whatever fortune I had amassed while unaware, was stained with blood. I couldn’t ignore the pull to discover more, to find out where that money was, but I accredited that more to the demon in me than anything else. I would not let myself be lured in by that part of my family’s life.

                “Right,” he nodded, swallowed, and seemed to stop and consider his next words before he went on. I’m sure Vergil was a contemplative man to begin with, but the thought he put into his new point was unnerving to watch. Like Dante, words appeared to come naturally to Vergil, and when he had to carefully select them, I became worried. “There is… more, to your family, than just the business.

                “You see, accepting that there is truth to the lore and myth of demons is easy for most people. Humans are inclined to believe that evil exists. And you’ll have to forgive me for lumping you in with them – you were raised human. Understanding demons, to you, came quickly and with little discomfort, did it not?”

                I had to think about that. While it was shocking that an otherworldly force had defined my entire life, while I was scared and upset that demons existed, had killed my mother, and were trying to kill me – yes. I had accepted that they were real, and it all came to me with such ease that I didn’t question it. It only seemed strange when it was pointed out to me.

                “There are other things in the world that are less… amenable to humans. Angels, for example. They are real and they are fearsome, and despite man’s inclination to the religious, they are widely disbelieved. Even those that accept demons have a hard time accepting their heavenly counterparts.” If Vergil thought I was going to argue, he didn’t let on. He kept going, leaving time for questions at the end. I didn’t want to argue, anyway. I was the daughter of the king of Hell, what room did I have for questioning what happened on this earth? “Further, these bodies – the angels, the demons, the archaic deities and current heavens and hells that they serve – they’ve granted boons to certain peoples.”

                Boons. I stared, and he continued, unperturbed by my slow, concerned blink.

                “You may, for lack of better terms, call these people witches. Warlocks. Sorcerers, and druids. They are all different deviations of the same kind, but it remains true that this power is passed down through generations, and whomever the first of their kind were, that path has deviated throughout their generations as their evolution has unfolded.” He paused again, but when I made no move to interrupt him – despite my mind brimming with questions – he continued once more. “Your family, Lucia, has won such a genetic lot. Your uncle – your mother, your cousin, your family before and after you – are all sorcerers.”

                I stared. He was right. Demons – angels, even – those were easy to accept. They were forces of nature – hellish and heavenly bodies who humans have been trained for centuries to abate or abide by. Magic? This was something completely different. Witches and warlocks were all stories told throughout history, tales of lies and deceit and tragedy, lessons we teach our children to instill morals, despite the grisly murders of medicine men and healing women. These weren’t things we were trained to think as _real_.

                “You see,” Vergil went on anyway, plowing past my confusion to get out the rest of what he knew. I was grateful – it was easier to listen than to think. “Your ancestors – whichever great Donati in the centuries before who began the family enterprise – have always based their business in their sorcery, and it was no different then than it is now. Your uncle and his organization – for he has a few more witches and wizards in his employ than you could shake the proverbial stick at – they use their magicks to their benefit. Having been gained in the early generations by some demon – the price already having long since been paid, worry not about that – the use of it garners demonic attention. I… do not doubt this is, in part, what led Mundus to your mother.”

                 I thought about that. My mother had never been forthcoming with her past. Whenever I asked about her childhood or our family, she would distract me. I got curious when I was in my early teens, but she would never entertain the discussion I wondered, briefly, how powerful she had been, then, to attract the attention of the king of Hell. And then I wondered if answers to my questions were finally on her mind when the demons took her.

                I shook that from my head, immediately feeling guilty for ever thinking such a thing. My mother had her reasons. Maybe she had left that life behind her, maybe being driven into Mundus’ arms had been the last straw for her. Whatever the case, there was no room for me to judge the dead. Especially not my mother, who had protected me for as long as she could from everything that had happened or would happen to me. I owed my mother my life – it wasn’t fair to hold her family against her.

                “Do they know?”

                He either didn’t understand my question or it took him off guard. When Vergil raised his eyebrow at me again, genuinely confused, I continued.

                “My family – Uncle Angelo and Nicky and – everyone else, I guess. Do they know about me, about Mundus?”

                Vergil, to his credit, put little to no thought into his answer, and that’s what made me believe it.

                “No. As far as I’m aware, your mother removed herself from the front lines of the family business before her… affair with Mundus.” Affair. I snorted. Good word. “While they may suspect you are not fully human – who would ever be tailed by demons for this long for no reason? – they are unaware that it is Mundus who is behind your troubles.”

                “So they know about the demons and everything? That I’ve been on the run because of those and not because of life troubles?”

                “Your cousin Nicky would not be guiding you towards spiritualists otherwise, I assure you.”

                I considered that. Nicky had been helping me since the beginning of this whole mess. I’d stayed with he and Angelo for a short time, but when it became clear to me that I was putting my own family in danger – hindsight’s a bigger bitch than I thought it was – I left quick. But Nicky had always been there to steer me in the right direction, wherever I put down impermanent roots.

                For some reason, I felt relieved.

                Even hearing all of this about my family – so much, in what felt like such a short time, from Mundus to my apparent sorcerer mafia history – I was thankful for it. It saved me from having to learn as I went, and it gave me an edge that I was sure Mundus didn’t know _I_ knew I had. I knew that _he_ knew I was a sorcerer, but as it stood, in the moment, he had no idea that _I_ was aware of my abilities.

                “Vergil,” I started, shifting closer to him despite the clear surprise on his face. I edged along the wall, scooting as close to him as I dared – for his comfort and my own safety. He may look weaker than Dante but I knew from experience that he had just as much demonic strength as his twin. “Is there… any way you could, I don’t know… teach me, about that sorcerer magic?”

                To his credit, Vergil didn’t even grimace. It was as though he’d been expecting, and prepared for, me to ask that.

                “Dante and my mother – her name was Eva and you’ll find her likeness in Trish, a trick played on my brother and I by none other than Mundus himself – she was a witch. Her magic was quite different than yours, but there are some basics between magicians and the science of magic that are the same.” He was finally looking at me, as though my interest in this was something that he respected and could understand. Like there was some kinship between us now that I knew. “I was raised differently than Dante. He had his life to live in the human realm but I was separated, raised on my toes and in Hell. I learned what I could of my mother’s magic there, and now grown I learned more. I tried my hand at other magicks – sorcerers, druids, warlocks – but as I said, while there are basic tenants, as a whole they are too dissimilar to learn. I can teach you those tenants and give you the resources that I know for sorcerers. Or,” and this he said with no small amount of trepidation. I already knew where he was going and I didn’t want to hear it. “Or, you can go to your family. Your uncle would be proud of you for-“

                “That’s not an option right now.” I shook my head, cutting off that line of thought before he could go anywhere else with it. If I went to my uncle with knowledge of my magic, of my demon powers, then there was no telling how quick he would have me enlisted in the family business. As long as Angelo thought I was as blissfully unaware as I had always been, that was good for me. Good for everyone, truthfully, because none of them would get further caught up in this demon business than they already were or had to be.

                Vergil nodded, understanding that, as well. He deserved more credit for putting up with me than I was giving him.

                “I will teach you what I can.”

                The thumping stomps down the metal stair moments later told me that Vergil and I hadn’t been alone. I couldn’t tell who it was – Nero or Dante or Trish or even Lady – but my intuition told me the second son of Sparda had been eves dropping on his brother and I during our conversation. I sighed, passed my hand over my face.

                “Is he always like this?”

                “I wouldn’t know.” Vergil shrugged. When I glanced up at him he snorted, as though it was obvious. “Surely he already spilled his life story? Dante and I were only raised together for a few short years, and there are even fewer that we both remember.” Yes, Dante had told me that, but I said nothing. It was interesting to hear from Vergil’s point of view. How different he remembers their lives – both together and apart. “We were together briefly – we worked together a few years past, though he was unaware of who I was until our time was cut short. I… barely know my brother.”

                I watched him, watched the expression on his face turn from passive neutrality to something more akin to genuine upset. Vergil was a twin but he had no idea who his brother was. They may have been related but there was nothing to bond them together aside from their blood and a few shared trials. I understood the relationship. Nicky may not have been my brother, but he was the closest family to my age that I had.

                “This week, then,” I remarked, scooting away from Vergil to give him the personal space I thought he might need. “This is the first time you’ve really spent time with him then, isn’t it?”

                Vergil thought about that for a moment, and dawning realization a moment later had him nodding. “Yes,” he finally replied. “Yes, this is the longest I’ve spent with my brother, openly and honestly, since we were children.”

                I thought about that, how miserable it must have been for both of them to know they had a twin brother out there, in the worst sorts of danger, without knowing them. Vergil had been raised in Hell. Literal, actual Hell. Or a Hell-like like realm. I didn’t want to ask about it, for the sake of keeping out of his private business and keeping his painful memories in check. Their father was Sparda. Though I didn’t know much about him, I had read some of the legends in my research running from the demons – enough to know that their childhood couldn’t have been easy, no matter how it went. Whosever story was more upsetting – Vergil being raised in hell or Dante being only half aware of who he was after watching his mother, and presumably his brother, get killed – neither was better than the other.

                And still, my heart ached for Dante who, through all of it, still somehow managed to not just call it quits on life and stroll into hell after his brother.

                Dante, who had seen the worst of the world and still offered the daughter of his worst enemy a room in his home to stay.

                “I’m truly sorry for the loss the two of you have suffered together.” Losing their father, their mother, each other. It was enough to drive anyone to the extremes.

                Vergil looked surprised to hear that, like he hadn’t heard anyone express sympathy for his situation in his entire life. I suspected that much might actually be true, and it was a treat to see his expression shift from surprise to relief to thanks before it turned back to that guarded stare. Almost as if he was confused, not sure how to feel thankful.

                “I- no one has said that to me before.” Ah, I was right.

                I shrugged, sitting back against the wall with my knees pulled up to my chest, crackers abandoned on the comforter beside me, spilling crumbs I knew I’d have to clean up when I could find the strength.

                “No one ever really said it to me, either. But everyone deserves to hear it.” That needs to. ‘Sorry for your loss’ used to piss me off. No one meant it, no one was sincere – they just said it because they didn’t know what to say. When I was fifteen and orphaned, they said ‘Sorry for your loss, you poor thing’ and that had been it. But hearing it now, from people that I knew understood, from people who had gone through similar or same ordeals, it meant the world to me. I just hoped it could mean the same to Vergil and maybe, sometime soon enough, Dante as well.

                Dante…

                “I should apologize to him, shouldn’t I?” I asked after a quiet moment between us.

                “That depends,” Vergil answered, and I nodded. It did depend. “Why are you apologizing?”

                “Because,” I started, really taking a moment to think about it. If Dante didn’t deserve my apology, I wouldn’t give it to placate him. This was something I had to weigh seriously. “He didn’t know I didn’t know, like you. And even if he did know that I didn’t, what’s he been doing for me this whole time? He’s been protecting me from demons, but who’s to say that he hasn’t been protecting me from my own family, as well? I don’t know if I need that protection, but I appreciate it being there. And he might have not thought it was within his right to tell me. Maybe he thought I should figure that out on my own, if I hadn’t already. He’s already got contacts with my uncle that I knew about before – those two detectives that came to see me. He deals with them. I should have figured something out by then. But I had more important things to deal with, and I hadn’t thought about it. Dante didn’t do anything wrong, he hadn’t lied to me intentionally or to hurt me. He just- didn’t say anything because he wasn’t sure of the situation.”

                I babbled on, thinking it over with each word and knowing I had come to the correct conclusion. I would forgive Dante for this, and apologize at the same time. He’d done nothing but help me this entire time and I had no reason to believe that he had any ulterior motive.

                “Then it sounds like you’ve got your answer.” Vergil replied, scooting forward so he was once more at the edge of the bed. I could feel our make-shift counseling session coming to a close, and I sat up straighter to afford him the respect he deserved. When he stood, Vergil glanced over me again, as if taking stock of me for the first time since he’d met me. “When you’re ready to take on the task of your magical education, you know where I’ll be. But please, make sure you’re strong enough, first. This isn’t easy stuff to learn. Especially so late in life.”

                I nodded, watching him go. But as soon as Vergil reached the door, hand on the knob to turn it, I spoke again.

                “Vergil – could you… could you send Dante up here? I think I’d better talk to him sooner, rather than later.”

                Vergil stared at me for a moment, that long silent gaze that pierced to the deepest meaning of my words, and nodded as he turned the doorknob.

                “Yes,” he agreed, taking a step out into the hallway. “That would be for the best.”


End file.
